Through a Glass, Darkly
by AriaAdagio
Summary: What would happen if Nick were given what he's always wanted? A NNPacker story with Dark Knighty leanings.
1. Chapter 1

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

**Author's Notes: This story was originally posted in 2001, but was taken down for NC-17 content. I am editing it to fit content restrictions now in effect on and will add parts as I get them corrected. I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

His breath caught viciously in his throat, burning as his oxygen-deprived blood pleaded for relief. Chest heaving, he began to feel numbness set into his limbs, almost effectively deadening them, and then a bone-crushing pain swept through his system like an explosion. He clutched desperately at his sides as he bit back a scream of agony. Something was terribly wrong...

Something was crushing his chest. He felt like he was being smashed in a trash compactor.

Nick stopped jerkily, stumbling slightly on the pavement as the momentum of his body carried him forward even after he had decided to halt. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, the crisp, cool night air cleansing his burning lungs. Surprisingly, with that small measure, the suffocating feeling began to recede like an outgoing tide, almost as quickly as it had arrived. He shook his head, his mop of thick blond hair tossing about. Odd...

"Are you going to drink that protein shake, or not?"

He spun around on his feet and looked around, but was unable to find the source of the voice... The voice he knew so well... Natalie... What?

"Well, come on! You look ill already and you haven't even tasted a drop... At least try my cooking before you reject it..." the disembodied voice said with an echoic laugh.

No. NO! He clutched at his temples, trying to stop the flashback as a spear of white, sizzling light crackled through his head. Not now, this was not the time... And yet, despite the dire situation, the sounds and smells and sights flooded the air around him, and he was unable to escape the memories as they descended upon him like an angry whirlwind.

EARLIER THAT DAY

"Well?"

He stared into her eyes, peered at her as she silently prodded him to do what he knew was certain to make him terribly sick. But as he watched her watching him with her big, bright eyes, he couldn't help but tip back the glass and take a hearty swallow.

He regretted doing so almost instantly. The noxious brown gook slipped down his throat way too slowly for his taste, and he couldn't help but gag. "Jeez, Nat! What the Hell is in this?" he cried with a disgusted curl of his lips, trying desperately not to choke on the stuff. He could feel it, oozing all the way down to his stomach, he could feel it.

Natalie smiled. "You don't want to know..." she replied mysteriously, the quirky grin never leaving her face.

Nick groaned theatrically as he set the glass down on the countertop, the foul substance sitting like a cinder block in his stomach. "That's what I was afraid of," he stated grimly, turning to give her a look of disapproval. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to kill me with these things..." he added warily.

"What?" she began, placing a hand on her chest in the perfect 'who me?' expression. "You didn't know?" she asked with a laugh and a bat of her eyes, dodging behind the morgue table with a certain quickness that he found quite hard to believe that a mortal could ever possibly possess.

Nick grinned. This was the type of thing he'd missed, this playful interaction. It was probably the first time since Natalie's goddaughter had been viciously murdered that she'd readily cracked a smile and been so openly playful. Taking advantage of her cheerfulness, he lunged after her like a big cat, skillfully avoiding the many breakable things that sat between them.

"Nick!" she said, backing away from him with a cautious tone in her voice, but to no avail. He felt his hands snake out to grab her almost as if they had minds of their own. "Eeep!" she screeched, half giggling as he took her into a platonic embrace, but not first without a little tickle to her sensitive abdomen. She shrieked, kicking outward and sending a pile of papers and case reports flying.

"That's what you get for torturing my stomach!" he cried with a hearty laugh as the previously well-organized files fluttered down around them and softly landed on the floor.

She laughed, leaning back into his comfortable embrace. She gripped him tightly and rested her head back on his chest with a sigh. "I've missed this, Nick," she said, softly.

He inhaled the soft scent of her hair, leaning his chin on top of her head lightly. "Missed what, Nat?" he asked, happily feeling her snuggle even more into his arms. Subconsciously, he tightened his grip.

"This. Just... being. I don't know," she replied, relaxed. "Does that sound stupid?"

"No, I don't think so, Nat," he replied, a tinge of regret suddenly haunting his tone as he looked ahead blearily. "I don't think so at all..."

They stood there silently for a few moments, relishing each other's touch, neither wanting to say something for fear of the peaceful moment ending. But fate, unfortunately, simply didn't to give them a moment to themselves.

"Nick! C'mon, let's hop in the green boat and get a move on!" Schanke exclaimed as he entered the morgue, clapping his hands loudly.

Reluctantly, Nick unwrapped himself from around Natalie. "Sure, Schank. The lead panned out, I take it?" he asked grimly, hoping that the answer would be an affirmative. They'd been on the trail of this bastard for a long time, with nothing but an ever lengthening trail of raped and mutilated bodies to go on. It sickened him, and the murder scenes had always been just barely tolerable for him. Luckily, Natalie had usually been there to cover for him when his beast came out to play.

He wanted to bring this guy down. Soon.

"Yup!" Schanke replied with a dopey grin. "We have ourselves a genuine, grade-A perp, tagged as Thomas Greenborough. All we gotta do is bag 'im," he drawled.

Nick smiled. Finally, a case that was amounting to something other than death. Lately, he had begun to feel as though that was all there was.

"All right, let's go. I'll see you at the loft later, Nat, okay?" he asked, turning to Natalie, who had been listening to the conversation intently.

"Definitely," she replied with a grin.

Nick leaned in and gave her a platonic peck on the cheek in his usual fashion, despite Schanke's questioning and relentlessly prying eyes.

"Be careful, guys," Natalie cautioned them as they shuffled out of the room.

With a quick nod, Nick smiled as he reached the door and turned back to look at her, his hand gripping the doorknob as though it were a lifeline. "As always, Nat. As always..." he replied softly, glancing sidelong at the ever-oblivious Schanke before mouthing 'later' with a lopsided grin. And then he was gone.

THE PRESENT

"Nick! He's getting away!"

The frantic cry of his heavyset partner shocked him back to reality, and he forgot all about the obviously somewhat effective protein shake and Natalie's earlier warnings.

He took off at a run, for once slightly behind Schanke rather than out ahead in the lead. Strangely, he could feel his muscles burning as he attempted to at least keep an even speed. The moments stretched into an eternity as he felt each and every pained tendon and muscle screaming for mercy, every sinew pleading for him to stop. Flex, burn, flex...

"Schanke..." he cried breathlessly, becoming distressed, but Schanke kept going and he felt himself forcing his protesting legs to follow. The pain was wicked, biting into him with cruel stabs of burning, clawing agony. He felt like he was going to die, and he quickly grew dizzy and so desperate for breath that stars were appearing before his eyes.

Suddenly, Schanke flung himself to the side, ducking behind a trashcan in the alley. Nick instinctively followed, but his duck and roll hurt quite a bit more than he'd remembered them to hurt in the past... He landed on the pavement with a resounding thud, and he felt, oddly, as he thought a bug hitting the windshield would feel. Barely able to convince his body to utilize his momentum and tumble to the side, he groaned and flung himself to the right. Only inertia saved his weak attempt.

Schanke was panting hard, back pressed up against the wall. "We've got him cornered... Nick. There's... no way back out..." he said between labored breaths as he cautiously peered over the barrel, only to have a bullet zing by his head. "He apparently realizes... this also," Schanke muttered, sarcasm dripping from his tone as he sat there catching his long-lost breath.

His eyes closed, Nick nodded mutely as he felt the air around him seem to crush him, not wanting to admit that he was glad they'd stopped simply because that meant he didn't have to run anymore. He was panting so hard that his chest felt like it was going to explode from the building pressure, and sheets of blackness were cascading before his eyes like waterfalls. "Schanke..." he whispered between pants, but Schanke didn't seem to notice. Something was wrong. Very wrong...

"Greenborough! There's no way out!" Schanke cried, obviously trying to get out of this situation peacefully.

Several hollow plinks followed as their perp took potshots at the barrel, and Schanke visibly flinched for each one. "Nick, cover me, I'm going to roll to the other side of the alley," Schanke hissed, not noticing that, for once, he was actually in charge of the chase, rather than following clipped orders from Nick.

Schanke didn't wait for an answer as he flung himself to the other side of the alley. More shots followed. Nick, despite the sweat wildly streaming down his face that was practically blinding him, managed to provide adequate cover. Thankfully, Schanke made it across safely, and Nick collapsed back behind the relative safety of the barrel, overcome with exhaustion.

Couldn't catch his breath... He closed his eyes and prayed that Schanke would be able to carry them through this mess, because he could tell, grimly, that he was already down for the count... What the Hell was wrong with him?

"Come on, Greenborough! You don't want to end it like this..." Schanke screamed into the darkened alley, tension gripping his face in a chokehold.

The rest was almost a surreal blur. As Nick tensely hunched up against the wall, fighting both his wildly cramping muscles and the nausea that was suddenly welling up in his stomach like a burbling geyser, he could hear Schanke screaming at Greenborough to give it up, only to receive numerous potshots in response, each hitting the barrel that separated Nick from the perp with a little metallic plink.

But for one shout, there was no plinking sound of a bullet hitting unyielding metal, only a rip-roaring pain in his left side. Nick cried out, jamming himself hard back into the brick wall with such force that he grew dizzy for several moments. He hadn't thought he had been in the line of fire...

But something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

It wasn't supposed to hurt this much...


	2. Chapter 2

"Come on, Greenborough! Come out with your hands up! You're not getting out of here any other way. Can't you see that?" Schanke cried. He'd called for backup only moments ago, but they wouldn't be here for a few minutes. The sirens were already faint in the distance, but still faint. And there were still precious seconds in this game that Schanke had to play that could all too easily mean victory for the other side. A victory that he simply could not permit.

"I'm NOT coming out!" Greenborough cried, enraged with panic and desperation as he took more haphazard shots at them.

Schanke groaned. For goodness sake, couldn't the guy see he wasn't hitting anything other than metal? He glanced over at Nick and felt his stomach sink, and for one precious second, he forgot entirely that he was playing target for a psychopath.

His partner was sitting back up against the wall, his hands clutched around his stomach, with his knees drawn up against his chest in obvious, if not muted, pain. "Nick?" he called, worriedly. Oh, please, don't let him be hit... Please don't let him be hit...

He didn't have time to listen for an answer. Greenborough, hearing the sirens now, too, made a run for it. Spraying bullets everywhere for cover, he leapt up and ran for the bottleneck between Schanke and Nick that separated him from a clean escape in the wildest bid for freedom Schanke had ever seen.

"Stop, or I will fire!" Schanke cried, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

Greenborough kept coming, charging forward like an incensed bull, feet pounding on the pavement as his nostrils flared.

"Stop, or I will fire!" Schanke repeated, raising his gun and training it on Greenborough's quickly advancing figure. The milliseconds passed by at a slow crawl as he lined up his shot.

And still, Greenborough kept coming.

Schanke hesitated only for a fraction of a second before he pulled the trigger and sent Greenborough tumbling to the ground with a loud thump. Breathing heavily, he watched for a few moments. Greenborough didn't move. The only sounds in the alley were the sounds of Schanke breathing and his blood rushing madly in his ears. Soon, the fact that Greenborough wasn't planning on getting up anytime in the near future became pretty obvious.

"Nick?" Schanke called fearfully, turning to his partner, who sat plastered up against the wall. Schanke dove across the alley to reach him.

Nick's chest heaved wildly, and his eyes snapped open to look at Schanke. "Schank..." he whispered, inhaling sharply as he seemingly choked on his own breath. Gone from his voice was the air of confidence that Schanke had always found. Gone was the quiet dignity. Only fear was there now.

Schanke's jaw dropped open and for a brief moment, there was only panic. Sheer, blind panic. His eyes wide, he stared at where Nick's trembling hands were clasped over his stomach, but he was able to give himself a mental shake when he noted thankfully that there was no blood there. Yet...

"Something's wrong," Nick said, his voice breathy and confused as he looked at Schanke with something that Schanke could only interpret as unmitigated terror. The infallible, indestructible, self-righteous, arrogant Knightmare had finally been hit. His partner was down.

"Well of course something is wrong, Nick! You've been shot!" Schanke said, trying to keep the edge of strain out of his voice as he fumbled shakily for his cell phone. His partner had been shot... And he looked bad. Real bad... At least Knight was awake and talking; it couldn't be too serious, then. Could it? Nick seemed to at least be smart enough to apply pressure to the wound by himself. He didn't need help there...

"No..." Nick protested weakly with a groan. "No... Something else is wrong... I..." he mumbled, almost incoherently, sweat dripping down his face. When his eyes closed and he stopped breathing for a fraction of a second, Schanke almost screamed.

Nick's hand shot out and gripped Schanke's arm fiercely, and Schanke sighed in visible relief as his partner's pained blue eyes slowly opened again. "Schank..." the whisper came, almost like a sob, as Nick's eyes squinted in pain.

Schanke paused only for a second as he lifted the cell phone to his ear and called for an ambulance. And then the world was in slow-motion again. People swarmed into the alley as backup finally arrived, crowding them inward.

"Schank..." Nick gasped again as he glanced wildly about at the mess of people flooding the alley. "I can't... can't go to the hospital... Something's not... right... can't go... to... please no... hospital... get Nat..." he panted incoherently.

Schanke could barely hear his partner through the din. The poor guy was becoming delirious, that much was obvious, and it slightly disturbed him that he was seeing his normally unflappable partner completely and utterly flapped. "Come on, Nick. Stay with me here..." Schanke whispered nervously as Nick fought for breath. This was looking more and more serious... God, he didn't want to lose a partner tonight...

"Gentlemen! What happened?" Cohen asked, suddenly appearing behind them, looking down over Schanke's shoulder.

"Not supposed... to hurt... get Nat..." Nick mumbled deliriously, looking at both of them with eyes wide, the classic deer-in-headlights pose.

"Greenborough didn't want to come in; he put up a bit of a protest. Nick got hit somehow," Schanke summarized in clipped tones as he briefly looked up at Cohen. "Nick? Nick?! Come on, man. Can you hear me? You're scaring me..." Schanke said, placing his hand to Nick's forehead, which was clammy and cold to the touch. Shock. Nick was probably going into shock...

Cohen knelt beside them as the crews began to scour the alley. "Detective Knight?" she asked, concerned.

Nick turned his head minutely to look at her, his eyes glassy and unfocused. "Nat..." he whispered forlornly, giving a mighty heave as he tried to stand up.

"Whoa there, Nick! Sit still; the ambulance will be here any second," Schanke exclaimed, forcing Nick down with his hand. He looked at Cohen, who looked back at him grimly. Blood welled up around the hand that Nick kept firmly clenched to his abdomen.

Sweat plastered Nick's hair to his head as he leaned back against the cold brick with a pained gasp. "Not supposed... to hurt..." he whispered again, leaning his head back against the wall with a harsh, hollow-sounding thunk. The sound made Schanke wince.

"All right, people. Stand back, please..."

Schanke sighed with relief at the wanted interruption. The paramedics were there, finally. A tall, brown-haired man split off from the group that was heading towards Greenborough and walked over to them.

"How long has he been down?" the medic asked as he crouched over Nick with a concerned look, placing a hand on Nick's forehead.

"Can't... no hospital..." Nick was mumbling softly.

"Ten minutes?" Schanke guestimated worriedly as he stared down at his rapidly deteriorating partner, praying silently that everything was going to be ok.

The medic nodded and put an oxygen mask over Nick's mouth. "No!" Nick cried, turning his face weakly away, but the medic caught his chin without too much effort and placed the strap around the back of his head.

The look that Nick gave Schanke then made him want to shrink back into the pavement. So much pain... and fear... For a brief instant, Schanke almost thought he could feel a connection between him and his partner, and the whole world around them when silent. A flash of light... A pulsing sensation... He just stared into those deep pools of blue agony, and was lost. Something was wrong... He couldn't breathe all of the sudden... His throat was closing...

"Continue compression!" someone shouted from behind him, and Schanke was ripped from his strange connection. Glancing about, he saw a pair of medics working fruitlessly to save Greenborough's life, and he couldn't help but shudder as he saw the murderer's eyes staring sightlessly up towards the sky, oblivious to the activity around him.

"Ntspposedtohurt..." Nick whispered as if he were drugged, swaying his head from side to side.

Schanke looked back down at his partner. The medic had ripped off his shirt and was carefully feeling around for exit wounds now. Nick was so out of it now that he wasn't offering any protest other than slack-jawed, incoherent mumbling. His eyes were drooped, and lifeless, his forehead cold and sweaty like an old washrag. He was dying...

Schanke watched grimly as a second medic joined the first and helped get Nick onto a backboard. "Can I come in the ambulance?" Schanke asked hopefully, suddenly feeling way too helpless. He gripped Nick's slack hand as they wheeled him to the waiting vehicle, but it didn't look as if Nick even knew what was going on anymore.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you're going to have to ride in another vehicle. We can't allow that..." the medic replied sympathetically with a shake of his head.

"Nat..." He barely heard the mumble from underneath the mask as Nick's hand was ripped from his own and the stretcher was lifted up into the ambulance.

Schanke stood back as the back doors were shut in his face, his hand still outstretched from Nick's lingering, sweaty touch. He felt his stomach sink with dread as he wondered silently if that would be last the time he'd ever see Nick Knight. He didn't want that image to be his last of his partner... He didn't want that...

"Come on, Detective, I'll take you in my car..." Cohen said, placing a hand consolingly on his back. "Don't worry, Knight's a fighter. He'll be all right," Cohen assured him as he flopped himself down in the front seat, but the rest was a blur.


	3. Chapter 3

It was dark, and strangely warm. He reached out, nearly expecting to be able to touch the blackness that had settled around him like a blanket, but he was greeted with empty air.

An odd experience, to say the least.

"Oh, Nicholas... What are you doing?" LaCroix's voice filtered unexpectedly through the murk, reaching out and curling around his conscience like soft tendrils of mist.

He turned around, but it was blurry. He couldn't see all that well. "LaCroix?" he asked, confused, peering into the darkness beyond. A warm breeze blew over the silence that extended between them, whistling softly in the emptiness.

"Not really," the apparition finally replied as light began to outline it, making it come into full view, and at once Nick was terribly disoriented. That certainly looked like LaCroix to him.

"I don't understand..." Nick replied, squinting against the light that surrounded his Sire's look-alike like a strange and ghastly halo of pale fluorescence.

I NEED X-RAYS NOW! WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THIS BULLET WENT! HOW ARE HIS STATS?

Nick turned around and searched the darkness behind him, surprised, and curious, at the intrusive, disembodied voice of a female he couldn't recall ever hearing before.

NOT GOOD. THIS THING REALLY WREAKED HAVOC. CONTAMINATION IS A DEFINITE. LOOKS LIKE WE'VE GOT A RUPTURE IN THE BLADDER... THE CATHETER IS RETURNING BLOOD...

"They're talking about you, Nicholas..." 'LaCroix' said softly, taking a step towards Nick. "You're going to die, you know," he stated matter-of-factly as the voice faded into a faint whisper in the background.

"What are you talking about? What's..." Nick began, turning back to the apparition, but 'LaCroix' interrupted him.

"You're mortal, now, Nicholas. Mortals get hurt..." 'LaCroix' explained sympathetically, shaking his head. Now, it almost seemed as if the darkness was pulsating around him, like an undulating chamber of nothingness.

Nick swallowed hard. Was that what was wrong with him in the alley? He had felt so strange... So fragile... "What? How?" he asked, praying for some better clarification, but he received none.

"Come with me..." 'LaCroix' commanded softly, taking Nick's arm and attempting to pull Nick into the murkiness with him. Into the unknown...

"What? No!" Nick exclaimed, viciously throwing the thing's hands off of him.

'LaCroix' shook his head disapprovingly. "Mortals die, Nicholas. Shall we not waste time with all of the aging and just be done with it now?" he asked curiously.

Nick's eyes narrowed, and he found himself backing up from the ghostly figure of his Sire that stood before him. He felt repulsed by this thing, whatever it was. This wasn't like any near death experience he'd ever had before, assuming that that was what it was. What was going on? "Who the Hell are you?" he snapped, very interested in receiving some answers.

"I am no one important. The real question we should be asking ourselves is... Who are you?" 'LaCroix' queried with a raised eyebrow.

Nick growled, frustrated. This was getting more and more dreadfully confusing with each new question. "What?"

"Do you really know what you want, Nicholas?" 'LaCroix' answered with a question, disapproval riddling his voice.

"Of course I do! Let me go back!" Nick exclaimed, suddenly coming to the conclusion that whatever this thing was, it was the source of his trouble.

"Oh, Nicholas," the thing commented with a pitying chuckle. "I'm not the one holding you back..." It paused briefly. "You are..."

Nick's eyes widened, and he automatically protested. "That's not true!"

'LaCroix' smiled, but the smile turned into a grimace as the apparition began to melt before Nick's eyes. "You can't just take a little taste, can you? You have to have it all..." it growled as it disappeared, leaving Nick once again in the murky darkness alone.

"Wait! How do I get out of here?" Nick yelled, his voice echoing strangely into the darkness beyond as he spun around on his feet and looked blindly about.

"I don't know, Nicholas. It's your mind, your thoughts, your boundaries. You figure it out..." the disembodied voice of LaCroix replied. "I sincerely hope you realize what you're doing..." it warned cautiously.

PUT HIM UNDER! LET'S GO!

And then it all faded to silence.

* * *

"I... he never said anything was wrong. It was so sudden--I didn't even realize he was hit until just before Greenborough charged..." Schanke mumbled tiredly, staring at the floor forlornly from the waiting room chair where he sat. He clutched the bridge of his nose in a pincer-grasp as he felt the exhaustion beginning to set in. He was developing a headache, and a bad one at that.

"Schanke, don't beat yourself up about this. You did everything you could, and now it's out of your hands..." Cohen said softly. "Hey, Greensborough's dead. You did some good tonight, Detective..."

Schanke sighed tiredly. "Captain, to be quite honest with you, I'd let twelve Greenboroughs loose if it meant one Nick got to live..." he replied, knowing that it was selfish of him to think such thoughts. Twelve Greenboroughs would leave a hefty trail of blood and bodies behind them, but then, he was sure the amount of people Nick saved on a regular basis cancelled that out. Even so, there was no justification.

Cohen, however, didn't have a chance to answer him.

"Where is he? What happened?" a frantic voice cried as the clicking of rapidly approaching heels drowned it out. Natalie came running up to the pair, a look of pained confusion on her face.

"Calm down, Nat..." Schanke said softly, trying to be a voice of reason.

"No, I will not calm down!" she cried. "WHERE THE HELL IS HE?" she yelled, bordering on hysterics. Schanke realized that she probably hadn't been told anything other than that Nick had been shot and was en route to the hospital.

"He's in the operating room. They put him under about ten minutes ago..." Schanke explained, strangely calmer than he felt. Perhaps, he could be strong for her. That, and after Nick woke up, he could go yell at him for the whole 'just friends' facade...

"WHAT!" she practically shrieked, and Schanke was taken aback by the strange fact that she found those words more frightening than comforting... Beginning to pace so fast that she was sure to run a trough into the floor if she kept her speed and determination up, Natalie looked like a caged lion.

Cohen stood up. "Doctor Lambert, that won't help things. Sit down," she commanded sternly, her face necessarily cold.

"You don't understand..." Nat whispered as she was guided to a chair, her hands shaking terribly. It was the first time in a long while that Schanke had seen her so visibly riled up. Just friends, eh? he found himself thinking again with a shake of his head. He felt a pain in his chest as he watched her sigh and place her head weakly in her trembling hands.

"Nat, I'm so sorry... If there was anything I could have done..." Schanke tried to console her, very aware that there was a good chance that Nick could still die.

"Where was he hit?" she asked grimly, ignoring his attempt to comfort her.

Schanke swallowed, suddenly feeling very guilty although he knew deep down that Nick's situation was not his fault. "Lower left-hand side. He was... He was pretty bad off when they drove away," he said reluctantly, before he thought to add, "He asked for you a lot..."

Natalie looked up then, her eyes awash with pain and confusion. "Did he say anything else?" she asked, a sudden flash in her eyes, as if she were searching for clues to some mystery that only she knew existed. Schanke didn't understand what the big deal was.

"Nat, he was pretty delirious. Kept talking nonsensical stuff about not being able to go to the hospital, things like that," Schanke said as he watched her eyes slowly drop, but was unable to include the repeated statement that 'it wasn't supposed to hurt this much'. He couldn't do that to her. He wouldn't even consider causing such pain when she was already in such a terrible state.

Natalie shook her head. "I don't understand..." she whispered, but offered no explanation as she wearily sat there, slumped, pale, and beaten senseless with worry. More worry than he had ever seen her possess before.

Minutes passed in what seemed like an eternity. Natalie just sat there, reviewing something in her head that he would never be able to guess at, shaking her head at even intervals as she came to the same conclusion every single time. She was in denial. Plain and simple.

Schanke gave up on watching her, and turned his eyes towards the double doors that withheld his partner's uncertain fate from him. And he sat there. Waiting. Visibly rocketing skywards with both hope and dread every time the doors swung open, only to be disappointed each time by the sight of a tired intern, or candy striper, or someone else altogether.

Glancing at his watch, he sighed. It had been hours. Was an operation supposed to take this long? He was growing more worried with each passing instant, and his feet were desperately prodding him to just be done with it and pace for all the good it would do.

Until finally, a plastic-covered foot came out, followed by a body, a skinny red-headed doctor who'd obviously just come out of an operating room. Her step was heavy and exhausted, her eyes weary. "Are you here with Detective Knight?" the doctor asked as she approached them.

They all nodded. "Well," she said with a hefty sigh, "we extracted the bullet from his pelvic cavity. It really ripped him up inside. We had to repair some extensive damage to the bladder and intestines, but I think we got to it in time. It's mostly a waiting game now..."

"When can I see him?" Natalie asked seriously, her shoulders visibly heaving with relief.

The doctor sighed, obviously very tired. "He's been put into ICU. You can see him now if you want--he's in room 107..."

Schanke sighed, feeling somewhat relieved. Nick was alive, and if things went well, then he would stay that way. Only Natalie's solemn look of grief and confusion prevented him from throwing his hands up in rejoice.


	4. Chapter 4

"Natalie!"

She didn't listen to them as she took off, leaving Schanke and the others lagging far, far behind her.

She ran as fast she could, only stopping briefly to apologize to the unfortunate victims of her careless head-on collisions. A thousand different explanations tumbled haphazardly through her mind as she flew down the immaculate hallways. He was faking it, and everyone had been hypnotized. The wrong guy had been mistaken for Nick.

Or...

Or he really was mortal...

The thought made her run even faster, put an extra spring in her step. She didn't want to get her hope up. Not after so many failures, so many setbacks... The lidovuterine had only been the beginning of an ever-lengthening line of them.

She'd tried other drugs, other dietary supplements, and nothing seemed to have any effect. The whole series of trials and failures made her feel as though the vampire was sitting regally, poised on a throne within Nick's mind, laughing at them over their foolish attempts, and the feeling was not one that she liked. Not at all.

103... 104...

The anticipation that was wickedly ripping at her heart threatened to tear it into bloody, shredded sinews.

105... 106...

She gasped as her breath suddenly ran away, leaving her flailing with oxygen deprivation, only to skid to a screeching halt, an impressive thing for one wearing spiked heels.

107...

Staring at the doorway, she suddenly found her feet making a stern refusal to move from their current position, and she almost went sprawling to the floor. What if he was mortal? If that were true, that meant he would be in very grave condition... Mortal bodies just weren't constructed with such abuse in mind. Nick would be hurting, if he were even awake, which he most certainly wouldn't be. And it would be a long time before he was completely healed, what with the damage the surgeon had described.

He would be so scared... Had he ever been so grievously wounded? She knew from the various puckers and jagged lines that scarred his flesh that he had indeed been hurt from time to time as a mortal, but had it ever been this bad? So loath was he to talk about his past, and especially about his life as a mortal, that she could not reach an answer, even as she grasped desperately at things she'd forgotten long ago, hidden away in the corners of her mind.

Shaking herself from her thoughts, she came to a sudden resolve. She inhaled deeply and clasped her hand steadily around the doorknob. It was now or never, and never was not an option she could ever choose.

Ever so slowly, she pushed the door open, at first only peering in. It was dark except for a dim fluorescent light that cast an eerie glow over the room, producing shadows that were guaranteed to make a jumpy mind ever so much more paranoid. There was a small little walkway with a bathroom off to the left, and the angle of the jutting wall made it impossible to see anything in the room beyond except for the very tip of the bed.

Silence gripped her as Natalie took a step into the room. Only the faint beeping of a heart monitor could be heard, tiny little blips that indicated the inhabitant of the room was alive.

Alive.

As if some force propelled her forward, she dashed the rest of the way into the room with newfound confidence, and subsequently stopped short.

She gasped.

The body lying silently on the bed was Nick, pale, still, and swathed in immaculate white sheets, like a long-dead corpse on a funeral pyre.

She placed a hand delicately on his neck and, after some light searching, was greeting with a weak heartbeat precisely matching the blips that floated through the room. Overjoyed, and at the same time overcome with a new grief, that her best friend was lying there so critically wounded, she drew up a chair and sat down beside him, staring at him as if he were an object to be worshipped.

"Oh, Nick..." she whispered softly, for the first time noticing the IV line that dripped steady antibiotics into his system, and the various other bags collecting waste. Never before had she seen him look so helpless, and it terrified her.

She placed a hand on his forehead, surprised to find it warm to the touch. Warm, and alive. Her hand strayed and began to play with a lock of his curly blond hair, feeling at once more intimate with him than she had ever been before. Nick would never let her touch him like this if he were awake.

He said it was because of the beast and what it might do to her, but it had always struck her as a lie...

"You sure picked a bang to come back into the world of the living with, didn't you, Nick?" she asked quietly, a sad chuckle tumbling from her lips as she leaned in close to his smooth face. The lines of worry that usually creased around his eyes were absent. His face was slack and innocent, free from the crushing weight of the guilt that consciousness brought him. It was hard to believe that he wasn't simply asleep. That he wouldn't wake up at any moment and snarl at her for the intrusion to his peaceful slumber.

A lone tear fell hastily down her cheek. "Damn it! I will not cry..." she said miserably to herself as she wiped the salty tear away on her sleeve. Her insides started to shake and tremble with the worry she had kept carefully in check until now, but she bit back on her tumult with ferocity. "Look at me, Nick. What a mess..." she whispered to the motionless form on the bed as if she expected some reply.

As much as she may have wanted one, however, she received none. Cradling her head in her hands, she sighed heavily, biting back another sob that threatened. Damn, damn, triple damn. What was she going to do?

How had this happened? Had someone decided that it was time to perform some twisted miracle? Because it certainly hadn't been her... Her help hadn't done this. Her help hadn't gotten Nick almost killed...

"Man-oh-man..." a distressed whisper came over her shoulder.

She whipped her head around at the intrusion. "Schanke..." she observed mirthlessly.

Schanke's eyes widened as he swept them across Nick's still figure. "He's so pale..." was all that the heavyset detective had to say.

Natalie sighed, but gave no response, looking back at Nick.

"Is he going to wake up soon?" Schanke asked softly, his voice choked.

She shrugged half-heartedly. "I honestly don't know, Schanke. The anesthesia probably hasn't worn off yet, but other than that, it's completely up to him..." she informed him.

"This is my fault, isn't it?" Schanke asked guiltily as he pulled up a chair next to Natalie. "I should've known..."

"Schanke, it was no one's fault, and especially not yours," she assured him, used to giving the exact same protests to Nick, not that he ever listened. But her curiosity got the better of her. "Should've known what?" she asked.

"That something was wrong the second that I got to take the lead for once. He was having a terrible time keeping up with me. Something was wrong before he even got shot..." he explained with a shake of his head.

Natalie's eyes widened a bit. Maybe she could get to the bottom of what had happened... "Schanke, what exactly happened?"

Schanke shook his head. "We were going after Greenborough... Nick couldn't keep up with me. Usually he's leaps and bounds in front of me, but this time he was so out of breath he looked like he was going to faint... It was too late to turn back though, and then we got into that firefight. I still don't know how Nick got hit... He wasn't even in the line of fire..."

So, Nick had apparently been having problems breathing? Maybe he had just made the change then. It was hard to tell, but he certainly had been very much a vampire shortly before at the morgue, which left only a small window of time.

"It could have been a ricochet... Or the bullet itself. They travel in a parabolic path, not in a straight line..." she explained softly, suspecting that it was the former. If the reason for his injury had been the latter, Nick would have probably been hit higher up because he would have been smart enough to be behind a barrier of some kind, unless he had been too distracted or disoriented by the change. It wasn't like he had been conditioned to duck or anything. Eight hundred years of perceived invincibility would be hard to reprogram, especially if he hadn't known what was going on in the first place.

"He was too close to the trashcan... The bullet would've blown his head off if it had just sailed in an arc," Schanke replied with a look of disgust.

Natalie shuddered at the image, but at least Schanke's comment had proven that her second conjecture was incorrect. One fewer thing to be left guessing about...

Suddenly, Schanke's eyes widened in a flash of enlightenment. "Oh man, Nat... What if... What if that was from a different gun?"

"You said you were just chasing Greenborough," Natalie said, suddenly worried.

Schanke opened his mouth to reply when a nurse poked her head in the room. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave. I can't let you stay too long..." the brunette woman said regretfully.

Natalie and Schanke both nodded, getting up from their seats. With one last lingering look at Nick, Natalie followed Schanke out of the room. The nurse smiled warmly at them. "You can come back in another hour, all right? Ten minutes every hour are the rules," she explained. Upon receiving a mute nod from Schanke, she rushed off.

Natalie immediately turned to Schanke. "You told me that you were just chasing Greenborough!" she repeated.

Schanke nodded. "We were! Maybe he had an accomplice or something? I swear, Nat, one second I looked and Nick was fine, the next he was hit, and I didn't hear a shot... I would've heard ricochet... I'm so STUPID! Why didn't I think of this before now?" Schanke asked, making wild gestures with his hands.

Natalie took a deep breath. "Calm down, Schanke. I'll just take a look at the bullet that they dug out of Nick and compare it with Greenborough's rounds..." she assured him, suddenly wondering why it hadn't occurred to her before either. "But, Schanke... If the round recovered from Nick was from a different gun, that means the shooter is still out there somewhere..."

She saw Schanke visibly swallow. "That's precisely what it means, Nat..." he commented, his face visibly paling.

Nick's nameless, faceless, would-be murderer was still on the loose.


	5. Chapter 5

Natalie stared at the plastic evidence bag in her hands, and dread overwhelmed her. She didn't need to do any special testing. The bullet wasn't from the same gun. The pellet wasn't even the same. Greenborough's rounds were from a low caliber hand pistol. This one was steel. Armor-piercing. Probably from a high caliber rifle. Possibly a sniper rifle.

And someone had shot it at Nick. This was no ricochet...

"Oh, honey. I just heard..." Grace Balthazar said as she came racing into the room, taking Natalie into a comforting hug. "How is he?" she asked, concerned.

Natalie sighed, somewhat overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of sympathy. "He'll be all right," she whispered, not daring to try her speaking voice, afraid that it would crack. He would be all right. He had to be. Eventually...

Grace released her and nodded. "Well, the entire office is rooting for him. There's already a pool for how long the nurses will be able to keep him in his room..." she commented, trying to lighted to mood.

Natalie simply didn't see the humor. "He's not even conscious. I don't think they'll have much trouble," she whispered bitterly.

Grace looked as though she'd been slapped. "Nat..." she said, backing up a bit.

Natalie shook her head and exhaled heavily. "I'm sorry, Grace. It's just... I'm so angry!" Angry that some bastard ripped away Nick's first moments as a brand spanking new member of mortality. Angry that that newfound mortality had already been tested.

Grace nodded in understanding. "Well, at least the shooter..." she began, but Natalie interrupted her.

"The shooter is still out there, Grace. The bullets don't match..." Natalie said, swallowing at Grace's horrified look. "Could you take this down to the lab? I want this thing cross-checked against all the registered guns we've got on record..." Natalie explained, proffering the plastic bag towards her coworker, although she doubted the search would turn up anything. No one in his or her right mind would've fired such a conspicuous type of bullet from a registered weapon, especially not at a police officer.

Grace's eyes shared the same doubt that Natalie felt, but without another word, she acquiesced and rushed off with the evidence bag, realizing that the matter was urgent.

Natalie barely wasted a moment, collecting her things and rushing back to the hospital. She'd already spent three hours in the lab finishing up the analysis of a few things that had been interrupted when she'd gotten the call about Nick. That, and looking at the bullet. She had had to go through a virtual Hell to get that thing in her hands so quickly. Luckily, she hadn't been strangled by red tape, but the whole process had left her quite flustered.

The time it took to get back to him seemed like an eternity, but she finally arrived at Nick's familiar, immaculate hallway. Schanke was sitting outside the room in a chair, shoulders slumped. "Schanke?" Natalie asked as she approached, curious. "You don't have to be here..." she said, her voice wavering slightly.

Schanke shook his head. "I know, but... If there's someone gunning for Nick..." His voice trailed off, and immediately, Natalie understood. Schanke was playing bodyguard, as Nick had so often done for Schanke.

"What about Myra and Jenny?" she queried.

"They know what happened. I called them when I went to get some coffee... I told Nick hello and get well for them. He's not awake yet..." Schanke explained in clipped tones, visibly exhausted.

"Schank, go home," she commanded, but he stubbornly remained in place. "I'll stay here with him," she assured him.

He let loose a huge, jaw-cracking yawn, and he looked upwards in thought as he contemplated her words. But he still stayed where he was. "Look, at least get some sleep and a shower... You won't do Nick any good if you're too tired to stay upright," she reasoned.

Finally, he gave in and stood up. "I'll be back in a few hours," he half said, half groaned, leaning heavily on the wall before shuffling off.

"Schank?" Natalie called after him. "Take a cab, okay?" she asked, concerned. He merely nodded sleepily and was gone.

She went, once again, into the darkened room and sat beside Nick's pale form. Feeling a tinge of sadness, she noted his extremely ghostly pallor, almost a pasty flour white. And despite how perfect a picture of bad health he painted, the relaxed features of his face still continued to amaze her. How one could look so angelic and so innocent in sleep always surprised her, especially when the difference was so severe as Nick's.

She lay her head down on top of her hands, resting her chin gently next to his shoulder. Turning to the side, she gasped at the sight of his chest rising and falling, rising and falling, all of its own volition, and despite her worry, she was unable to suppress a small smile. That was a sight that she could get used to very easily. Easily indeed.

"What have you done to him?" The cold whisper shocked her from her pleasant thoughts.

LaCroix. She had never met him before, but this individual fit the bill, and his voice was as rich in person as it was on the radio. At once, she felt very nervous, and she unconsciously gripped at Nick's limp hand.

"I didn't do anything, LaCroix," she said acidly, rising to her feet in hopes of leveling off some of the intimidation his height was providing to her.

"Nicholas is lying in a hospital with a heartbeat and a near lethal wound. I somehow find it hard to believe that you had nothing at all to do with this situation..." he replied reasonably, not advancing, but certainly not backing down either. His face was cold and unyielding, but his eyes showed a scathing contempt for her that she found almost palpable. Why did this man have such reason to hate her?

"LaCroix, I assure you, that if I did anything that caused this, I am completely unaware of it," she challenged truthfully, determined not to back off.

LaCroix smiled slightly, a small quirk of his lips that could have been easily interpreted as a sneer. "Indeed," he replied, suddenly stepping forward, so sudden that she jumped in surprise. He smiled again, a strange, wolfish smile like a cat sizing up a mouse, and she immediately felt foolish. He had managed to get her to show her discomfort with the situation all too easily.

"Honestly, Doctor Lambert," LaCroix commented, disapproval emanating from his voice, but he grew silent as his eyes flitted to Nick.

Natalie swallowed, suddenly realizing his intent. "Don't you dare bring him across again," she commanded, much more firmly than she felt. She could feel her heart fluttering madly in her chest, and she was sure that LaCroix was perfectly aware of it.

He raised an eyebrow at her audacity, but remained silent, daring her to state her mind.

"Look, at least wait until he's awake. Let him make the choice..."

LaCroix remained silent as he pondered her words, and Natalie felt strangely like as though she were under a microscope, subject to his every observation.

"LaCroix, don't!" she whispered harshly, praying that he would listen. She couldn't let Nick's centuries-long wish be destroyed like this... She looked wildly about for something, anything, that could be used to deter the ancient vampire should he choose to take Nick, but came up with nothing.

His eyes narrowed, and he regarded her for a moment. "Doctor, I have no intention of bringing him across against his wishes. I do not wish to hear him complain for another eight centuries..." LaCroix finally stated quietly, looking down at Nick's still form with... pain? Regret? Natalie tried to interpret the minute changes in his expression, but they were so slight that she wondered if she were imagining them.

"But, why?" Natalie asked, dumbfounded. Alarm bells were ringing ferociously in her head like air raid sirens. This was not the LaCroix that she expected. This was not the LaCroix that she had heard Nick discuss with such turmoil and frustration. The man that she was looking at could not be trusted.

"Because I know what he wants," came LaCroix's cryptic response. "And I think that Nicholas needs to discover himself, for himself..."

Natalie smiled. "Well, I'm glad you've finally realized what Nick's been trying to tell you for years on end," she replied haughtily, although deep in her mind she felt wary. Very wary. This had been too easy.

"Indeed," LaCroix replied, his lips turned upwards in a sly smile, but the way in which he said it gave it a strong lack of either confirmation or denial, and it scared her.

She swallowed. "I must admit that you surprise me," she replied calmly.

He quirked an eyebrow. "Good. It is always preferable to be unpredictable in the eyes of an adversary," he stated, still looking at Nick.

Her chest constricted at his comment. So, he thought her an enemy? "I'm only an adversary because you make me one. If you would just let Nick go, this wouldn't be an issue," she ground out through her molars, barely resisting the urge to snap at him. Hell, she wanted to throttle him!

The vampire was silent for a moment. "No," LaCroix finally replied. "You are an adversary because you cause Nicholas more pain than I ever could."

But before she had a chance to question him, he was gone in a quiet gust of air. When his absence finally registered, the tension in the room disappeared as if it were air gushing out of a pricked balloon, and Natalie collapsed back into her chair. She didn't have the energy to contemplate why LaCroix had said and done those things.

"That was a close one," she told her silent companion, yawning as the adrenaline withdrew from her body and was replaced by bone-weary fatigue. "I'll just put my head down a for moment," she argued with herself, placing her chin down on top of her hands beside Nick, much as she had right before LaCroix had arrived.

Rising and falling... She drowsily found herself marveling at Nick's sleeping form once more. "Just a moment..." she mumbled as her eyes fell closed of their own volition and did not open again.

"Jss a mmnt..." she slurred, lulled into unconsciousness by the beeping of Nick's heart monitor.

"Ma'am it's time to..." the nurse poked her head in the room again and smiled at the sight. "Well, I suppose we can let the rules go this time," she whispered conspiratorially at the pair of sleeping forms, and then went off to do more pressing errands.


	6. Chapter 6

Beep. Beep. Beep.

He became distinctly aware that he was awake, and that he did not wish to be. The very quiet beeping only served to agitate him. He felt weak, and tired, and his whole body hurt.

Warmth. There was warmth on his face...

He cracked open an eyelid, only to be greeted with a stabbing ray of sunshine. For a brief moment, he felt the beginnings of panic, until he realized that, although he felt warmth smooth across his face like a blanket, there was nothing else. No blinding pain, no burning sensation as his insides incinerated into dust. And he found that the feeling was rather pleasant.

So tired...

He opened his other eye and allowed his lids to droop lazily as his pupils adjusted to the light, surprised to find that his eyes didn't hurt from such brightness and that they adjusted quite aptly. As the last wisps of unconsciousness left him, he realized how dry his throat was, and how badly his abdomen hurt, as if he were recovering from a vicious stab wound to the gut.

Trying to lift his hand to examine the damage, he was surprised to find that he simply couldn't. He felt as if his arms were two-ton weights. Why was he so weak?

_Something's wrong._

_Well of course something is wrong, Nick! You've been shot!_

He gasped as the memories assaulted him like physical blows, beating his brow painfully and drawing a terrible sweat.

_No... No... Something else is wrong... I..._

He was afraid. Afraid and alone, and Schanke was helpless to aid him.

Schanke, don't call the ambulance... Don't call...

_Can't go to the hospital..._

Panic! The Enforcers couldn't know about this... The doctors would immediately know that he wasn't human. He couldn't go to the hospital...

Schanke, please... Please...

_Get Nat..._

She'll know what to do.

Fear. Shock. It wasn't supposed to hurt like this...

_Ntspposedtohurt_

He panted furiously.

Think reasonably! Forcefully, he slowed his rapid breaths, calmed himself down, let the trauma slip from his mind. Memories. That was all. The stuff of dreams and faint recollections that haunted each and every one of his eternal nights, and that was all... All it ever was. Just memories.

His eyelids drooped again. Such a heavy weight for such small pieces of flesh...

So tired...

There was something he wanted, he could tell. Something deep within the pit of his chest was screaming for relief. Dry. Cold. He felt dry, exhausted... His throat was cottony, his tongue like sandpaper, and he yearned desperately for something to soothe it. Thirsty, that was it. Dreadfully thirsty. And at the same time, he could feel nothing of the bloodlust. The beast was gone.

He was mortal.

In a flash of brilliant enlightenment, he realized that the incessant beeping was monitoring his own heart.

"Nick?"

He started at the sleepy utterance, turning his gaze to his right for the first time since he'd woken up. "Nat?" he asked, or at least, he tried to. All that came out was a cracked, wheezy breath of air because his throat was so parched. He looked at her with confusion.

She looked excited, but tired. "You're awake!" she stated happily, more ecstatic that he could ever remember her being.

"Thirsty..." he rasped, finally managing to utter something that she could understand.

Natalie bounded up from her seat and flew into the bathroom, and Nick could vaguely hear the water running. He closed his eyes, the battle to keep them open requiring far too much effort. So tired...

"Nick?" Natalie whispered, under the impression that he had fallen back asleep.

He slowly opened his eyes, surprised. He hadn't heard her approach at all. Were his senses so blunt now that he couldn't hear a simple footstep in the same room? That was going to be something he had to get used to...

She tipped his head up and gave him the precious liquid from a clear plastic cup. Never before had he ever thought water could taste so delicious. He swallowed greedily, wetting his throat and mouth with the cool elixir. Sadly, it was gone all too quickly.

"More?" Natalie asked, concerned.

"No," he replied weakly, despite the fact that he wanted it. The water had only whetted his thirst, it seemed, but he needed to figure out what was going on... That was more important.

She looked at him expectantly. "How do you feel?" she asked anxiously.

Terrible. Absolutely terrible. "I'm okay," he replied hesitantly, his voice quiet. He couldn't manage anything louder. He hadn't felt like this since he had been injured in the crusades. "What happened?"

"You got hit. The bullet decided to bounce around in your abdomen for awhile," Natalie explained grimly. "We think the shooter is still on the loose."

"Greenborough got away?" Nick asked, perplexed. He could've sworn that Greenborough had been taken down by Schanke, but then, his memory was a little fuzzy.

"No… We suspect that someone was sniping at you guys."

Nick suddenly grew worried. That would either mean someone was intentionally gunning for them as a stand-alone job, or that Greenborough had an unknown accomplice. "Schank?" he asked.

"He's all right. Actually, he was keeping vigil outside your door until I sent him home to get some rest..." Natalie said with a light chuckle.

He nodded slightly and closed his eyes. Keeping them open was a magnificent feat, and he didn't really want to waste what little energy he had on that. He felt literally like he'd been run over by a truck, dragged for twenty miles, thrown off a cliff and then impaled on the rocks below to boot. Not to mention the fact that he felt ill, definitely not a pleasant sensation, and growing more unpleasant by the moment. Nausea or being gored. It was hard to decide which was worse.

But he was mortal. Mortal... Soon, he would be able to go in the sunlight, get a tan, eat food, but for now he really didn't want to think about it. For now, he was a complete invalid, and he would be for a while with such stunted healing capabilities.

"Nat, what was in that shake?" he whispered, desperately fighting the urge to fall back into a healing sleep.

"Nick, there was nothing in that that hasn't been in any of my other shakes. Those things aren't supposed to change you back, presto-chango, they're supposed to provide you with an adequate dietary substitute so you can stay off the blood long enough for you to change back. I honestly doubt the shake had anything to do with your change," she explained with a puzzled expression. "Of course," she continued, "that means that we're staring wide-eyed at a miracle from above, which seems just about as likely..."

Nick couldn't help but think that maybe it wasn't meant to be a miracle. Maybe he was supposed to have died in that alley. The sniper had obviously been operating under that belief... And strangely, Schanke had not been fired at at all, it seemed, although in the crossfire a stray bullet from a rooftop above would have been hard to differentiate between the ones flying directly through the alley. Schanke may have been shot at and not even realized it.

"Well, look what decided to drag itself out of near death! Man, Nick, I'm so glad you're awake!" the familiar voice of his partner invaded his contemplation. He saw Schanke's elated face hovering behind Natalie. "How do you feel?"

Nick smiled slightly. That seemed to be the popular question of the day. "Peachy," he deadpanned, but his yawn ruined it.

Schanke smiled. "No offense, bud, but you look like crap," his heavyset partner replied.

"Next time, you can get shot, all right?" Nick replied, closing his eyes exhaustedly, for once continuing the playful banter that Schanke often offered.

Natalie's warm hand patted his shoulder. "You get some rest, Nick," she whispered.

He didn't really bother to respond. Never before had he found her medical advice to be so appealing and easy to follow.


	7. Chapter 7

Natalie stared at the scalpel in her hands and noticed it shaking slightly, even as she tried desperately to hold the damn thing still. The whole idea that Nick was mortal was just making it so incredibly hard for her to concentrate on work. Her mind just kept drifting to all the things she was going to have to introduce him to, like chocolate, and sunbathing, and... Well, after he was back on his feet, she rationalized. Right now, sitting up would probably be about as much as his traumatized body could muster, if even that.

Which, of course, brought her back to the whole idea that some insane assassin was still out there, still very much alive, and still planning who knew what. Surely, he, or she, had heard that Nick had survived the hit. Natalie had seen the headlines plastered all over the morning papers. Somehow, the story had leaked to the press that a gunman in an attempted assassination of a police officer was still at large.

The coroner's mindset that had grown to inhabit her head was kicking in to full gear. She found it odd how badly the so-called assassination had been botched. Any trained sniper would not have missed and hit Nick so low in the abdomen. He or she would have gone for a critical hit, say the heart, or the forehead, or maybe even the liver. But this, this was just really unusual.

Only a happy trigger finger would have gotten the hit so far off the mark, because from what she had heard of the story, Nick had not been much of a moving target. And people did not hire hit men with reputations for being happy trigger fingers...

And that led her to another question. The gunman had gone for Nick. If, in some odd twist of fate, Greenborough had hired help, the shooter would have been going for Schanke, because he had been the one trying to talk Greenborough out of the alley. From what she'd heard, Nick was pretty much out of the picture, ill from the very start of the chase.

Which meant... The shooting didn't have anything to do with Greenborough. The hit was aimed expressly at Nick, and the hit was not meant to kill. And that, to her, made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Why use a hit man to not kill the target?

Something was wrong with this picture... Very wrong...

"Nat!" Grace cried boisterously as she came busting into the room without even bothering to knock. "I got the reports back from the lab. The bullet didn't match any of the guns on record."

Natalie's face fell. The news was as she had expected it would be.

"But," Grace continued when she saw her coworker's crestfallen face, "We did get fingerprint matches!"

Natalie threw the scalpel on the tray and visibly jumped with excitement. "You're kidding. Please tell me that you're kidding!" she exclaimed.

With a grin, Grace shook her head. "Aliyah Kaldereski. She's on the record for one DWI, two counts of assault, and various other misdemeanors."

Natalie creased her brow. A petty criminal, at best. Didn't really seem like a professional hit woman. Another strange piece in a bizarre puzzle. "Are you sure that it's correct, Grace?" she asked hesitantly.

Grace just looked at her. "Well, I could have them run the test again... but..." she replied.

"Oh, Grace. I'm sorry. It's just that this case is so damn strange! Never mind, I trust you," she responded with a smile, dismissing her coworker with a slight nod.

Natalie quickly walked over to the phone and hit speed-dial number three.

"Detective Schanke, Metro PD, 96th Division," a gruff voice said after only two short rings.

"Schank, it's Nat. We managed to pull some fingerprints off of the bullet the doctor extracted from Nick," she stated, much more calmly than she felt.

"No! You're jerking my chain!" Schanke replied, with far much more hope in his voice that he had probably desired to let on.

"Nope, Schank. This is a live one. Aliyah Kaldereski. A-L-I-Y-A-H K-A-L-D-E-R-E-S-K-I. She's got a rap sheet, too," Natalie said slowly into the receiver. She could hear Schanke scribbling on a sheet of paper.

"Hmm-mmm," he mumbled as he finished his notes and typed some stuff into his computer, to bring up the record. "Wow, that seems..."

"Strange?" Natalie interrupted, finishing his sentence for him.

"Yeah," Schanke confirmed after a long and baffled pause.

"Listen, Schank. This has been bothering me for a while. If this woman were an accomplice, she would've tried to hit you, instead of Nick. But if it were an assassin, then Nick wouldn't have been hit where he was hit. At least, that's my own, possibly warped, reasoning..." Natalie trailed off, trying to reason with herself that she was just going insane, and that there really was some reasonable explanation for all of this.

"Yeah, I've been thinking that, too," Schanke replied with a confused tone in his voice, his mental gears almost palpably cranking. "I guess I'll have to go bring this girl in and see what she has to say," he continued, a slight touch of venom entering his voice.

"You do that, Schanke. You do that," Natalie concluded, because she was just as curious as Schanke obviously was.

* * *

She was glaring again...

Schanke crossed his arms in a classic Superman pose, trying to intimidate the slight woman who was sitting before him. He found the fact that this little drink of water was even capable of hefting a gun quite hard to believe, let alone two counts of assault, and she had come in completely willingly, as if she had known that she was going to get caught.

Her dark, gaunt features were framed by straight, jet-black hair, although he doubted that it was naturally that color. Standing just short of five feet, clad in black leather, copious piercings, pasty white makeup, four inch spike-healed boots, and a more than slightly revealing 'thing that should have never ever been classified as a top', she was the paradigm of all that was stereotypical Goth.

Just the thought that someone would willingly wear such... stuff... gave him the heebie-jeebies. It was wrong, that's what it was. She had even had fake fangs stuck in place with adhesive when she had answered the door, like she thought she was some sort of femme fatale vampiress.

The sicker thing about it was that she had been with a guy, who she had dismissed quite quickly upon Schanke's arrival. Apparently the fang thing was a fetish. The thought made him shiver. There were weird, weird, weird people on this Earth. Times like this made him want to grab a souvlaki and hide away in his house with his quirky, but mostly normal family of three.

"So," he finally began, "do you think you could tell me one more time? Were you hired to make a hit on my partner?"

The girl nodded mutely--several of the chains that adorned her neck rattled slightly at the movement.

"Would you mind elaborating, or shall we use the pulling teeth questioning method?" Schanke added, irritation seeping into his voice.

Aliyah sighed. "Look, some dude hired me to shoot your partner, but not kill him, all right? I don't know why, or who my employer was, just that he gave me a shit load of money, and I don't really care about the rest," she replied haughtily.

"Uh huh. So what did he look like?" Schanke asked.

"Who?" she asked dumbly, a pierced black eyebrow raised in question.

"Your employer," he replied, grinding his teeth in annoyance. This girl had the open appearance of being cooperative, but she wasn't giving him the half of it, and that fact bugged him immensely.

She shrugged theatrically. "I don't know."

"You don't know..." Schanke repeated, disbelief dripping from his voice, as he sat down heavily in the chair across from her. This was unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. "What, was this hiring through correspondence or something? You know, assassin-by-mail sort of thing?" he replied incredulously.

"No," the girl said, suddenly looking confused, as if she were grasping for straws that were simply not there to grasp. "I remember the conversation perfectly, but... I can't remember his face..." she continued, her voice trailing off into oblivion.

Schanke threw up his hands. This girl had some screws loose, that was for sure. "Well, tell me about the conversation then."

"I was at a bar," she began softly.

"Which bar?" he interrupted, trying to get some piece of useful information out of her.

"I don't know," she replied.

"Great," Schanke said sarcastically before motioning with his hands for her to continue. "Go on," he prodded.

"I was at a bar and this guy just sat next to me and asked me what I'd be willing to do to make a million dollars. I told him I'd do just about anything, except kill myself, cuz then, well, you can't really use the money if you're dead..." she continued.

Schanke fought the terrible urge to break out laughing. Not only a Goth, but a ditz... The two didn't seem to mesh well. "Good reasoning..." he deadpanned, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

She didn't seem to notice. "Anyway, he pulled out this big wad of bills and said they were mine if I trailed your partner and shot him, as long as I didn't kill him."

"And you don't remember what this guy looked like, or what his name was?" he asked again, realizing that he was going to get nowhere. The girl was either dumb as a post, or she was a damn good actor. Either way, he was on the losing side of the battle.

"No... It's... fuzzy," she said absently. "I may have had a little too much to drink that night or something."

"You think?" he asked incredulously, unable to contain himself. "And what, did you purposefully leave your fingerprints so you'd get caught?"

She shrugged. "I forgot to wear gloves, so sue me... The money will be worth it anyway, even if I'm out of circulation for a few years..."

Schanke rolled his eyes at her shamelessness. Some people... "Look, Miss Kaldereski, if you think of anything while you're in lock-up that could help me, let the guard know and he'll come get me. All right?" he said as if he were talking down to a child.

She just smirked. "Don't think I don't know what you think about me, Detective. Even if I could help you any further, I wouldn't..." she replied nastily, standing up to be led out by the guard.

Schanke sighed. This was not turning out well at all, and some loon was still out there with his sights on Nick.


	8. Chapter 8

Two weeks.

He sat trembling on the floor of the large bathroom, praying that a nurse would not discover him cowering there in the darkness. Two weeks of mortality and he was already sick. He had barely managed to walk the distance from the bed to the bathroom, and the pull on the stitches in his abdomen had been really uncomfortable, although it had not hurt nearly as much as the first time the nurse had forced him out of bed. His wounds were definitely healing, if not way too slowly for his tastes.

Two lousy weeks.

"Oh, God," he groaned as his stomach spasmed viciously and his straining abdominal muscles seemingly ratcheted up his torso. Reflexively, he leaned over the bowl and let loose his entire dinner. His head was swimming, and his vision was carpeted with little black dots. Stomach literally doing flip flops in his abdomen, he clung to the rim of the toilet as if it were a life raft, his only salvation, but the acrid smell of vomit and the taste of bile in his mouth just made him feel worse.

His stomach heaved wildly, but luckily nothing came up this time. This had been the first time he had been allowed to eat something remotely solid, and he was paying for it heavily.

"Nat, I promise never to make fun of you when you have the flu aga--" His sentence was woefully interrupted as his innards heaved and more of his stomach contents emptied into the bowl.

He leaned back shakily and sat there, eyes closed, praying silently that his churning innards would calm down. This wasn't normal, was it? He was injured, not ill, and here he was losing his guts like the worst case of the flu ever recorded. Finally, his stomach calmed down and he dared to stand up, stumbling very slowly back to bed.

Two weeks.

He shook his head miserably as he settled himself back into his bed in hopes of getting some small semblance of sleep.

Maybe it would get better soon.

A dead end. That's where he was. A complete and total impasse of galactic proportions.

* * *

"Are you going to eat that last donut?"

Schanke looked up from his work to his temporary partner, Jacob Michaels. He was a good guy, but he just wasn't Nick. The man was as friendly and polite as they came, but Schanke wouldn't trust his life to him in a fire fight for any amount of money in the world, and when it came to partners, that was a bad thing. A very bad thing.

He had told Captain Cohen about the problem, and she'd been understanding about it, but she simply didn't have the personnel to dish out temporary temporary partners on demand like that.

"No, go ahead," Schanke finally responded, slightly crestfallen. Nick never would have stolen the last jelly donut. Of course, Nick really wouldn't have stolen any donut, because he didn't eat anything but those disgusting health shakes that Natalie made for him, but that wasn't the point.

The point was that they were nowhere. After they'd dragged in Miss Kaldereski, the leads had gone dry. They were no closer to solving who was behind the whole scheme to get Nick in the hospital than they had been before they had gotten her in custody.

What Schanke needed was for Jacob to just get one of those Nick-patented 'I'm off somewhere in the Pink Planetary Nebula, check back later in a few minutes' looks and then dash off, only to miraculously come back a few hours later with the entire case solved and the criminal bagged and tagged. He sighed. Sometimes Nick's eccentric mind was such a benefit to his now glowing case record that he wondered if he ever solved any on his own anymore.

Schanke stared at Jacob as he ate the jelly-donut with excruciating slowness, surprised to find that he was actually becoming critical of the fact that Jacob had brown hair instead of blond now. Finally, Jacob stopped his powdery feast. "What?" he said, irritated, "I asked if you wanted it..."

Schanke's mouth fell open. "Uh, it's nothing, never mind. Enjoy," he quickly said, tearing his eyes away from the delectable snack item that had been so viciously ripped from his grasp by inescapable politeness.

"Uh huh. You had that look again," Jacob commented dryly.

"Look? What look? I don't have a look..." Schanke hastily denied.

"The 'damn, I wish Nick was here instead of Jacob' look," Jacob said, his voice sounding slightly hurt.

Schanke immediately felt guilty. "Look, Jacob, I'm sorry, you're a great guy and all... but a guy like Nick... Well, he just grows on you, that's all. He's a hard act to follow, and I'm sorry if I've been trying to compare you to him."

Jacob just nodded. "Better you than me, I suppose."

Schanke raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

Jacob smiled. "I've just heard some interesting things about The Knightmare. You know, that he scares the perps, that he's hard to get along with, really aloof, you know, the standard precinct gossip."

Schanke shrugged. "Yeah, well, let me tell you something, and Nick would kill me if he ever heard me say it, but, all of that's just an act. Yessiree, just call him Mr. Facade. The Nick I know is the most friendly, loyal guy I've ever known."

"Why would he kill you if he heard to say that?" Jacob asked curiously, his brow furrowed in thought.

"Because I think he wants to be thought of as 'The Knightmare'. That way, he doesn't have to let anyone in. He's a very private individual. The epitome of a loner. I think he's been burned before, and I think he's just afraid of it happening again so he shuts everyone out. Except Nat, maybe," Schanke explained, surprised at his own insightfulness. It was amazing what terrible hunger produced...

"Why would you think that?" Jacob replied.

"Well, Nick has never told me about himself, at all. Hell, I rattle off about Myra all the time, but do you think I've ever heard one word from him about his personal life when it wasn't forced? It's like pulling teeth with him. He won't even tell me who Janet is," Schanke commented, mispronouncing the woman's name without realizing it.

"No matter how much I grill him about it," he continued after taking a breath. "I get the impression that they've been pretty serious before though. I've known the guy for years and I still don't know anything about his family or his past, or even very much of his present. But that's Nick. And despite all of that, I still would trust him with my life, if it came down to it, that is. I'm just sorry I couldn't come through for him when it counted..." Schanke finished guiltily.

Jacob looked at him sympathetically. "Well, hey, he's coming back soon, isn't he? He's been in the hospital for a month already, but just think about how much worse it could have been. We could be permanent partners, you know..." Jacob stated matter-of-factly, trying to console Schanke.

"Yeah, yeah, he does come back in two weeks. He gets a week off after he gets out of the hospital..." Schanke replied softly, silently praying that two weeks from then would arrive a lot faster than it seemed to be doing.

Fourteen more days without his good ol' partner to back him up. Well... to lead on in a gung-ho-like fashion while Schanke followed, hoping against hope that Nick's strange mind was in the right gear and not driving off to who-knew-where on a lead that he wouldn't disclose even if he were given Chinese water treatment. Yup. Those were the good ol' days.

"So how is he doing? Have you been to see him?" Jacob asked.

Schanke smiled. "He's actually doing pretty well. Healing up right on schedule like the punctual guy he is, actually. Last time I saw him he was pretty adamant about never wanting to stay in a hospital again. Can't blame the guy though, I doubt he's ever been in one long-term before. I don't think I can recall the last time I've ever seen him sick. Nick was Mr. Indestructible Energizer Bunny before this..." Schanke replied.

Jacob smiled. "Yeah, I've heard that about him, too. I don't know, I'm still pretty glad I won't have to keep up with him when he gets back. After a month and a half off from work, the guy is bound to be springy."

Schanke just groaned. "I hear you there! I just pray that Cohen doesn't try to stick him with some fluff desk job... Heaven help the precinct if that happens!" he exclaimed.

"A Knightmare, eh?" Jacob responded with a chuckle.

"A Knightmare..." Schanke confirmed, realizing with an inward groan what a terrible understatement that was.


	9. Chapter 9

Everything was dark, and, sightless as he was, he had been slightly dizzy on the car ride over. He shook his head, wondering when the last time was that he had even suffered a hint of motion sickness, even contemplated suffering a hint of motion sickness. A long time, that was for sure.

"Nat? Can I take the blindfold off yet?" he questioned, reaching upward to his brow. The damn thing was a starchy cotton--very scratchy and uncomfortable, even to his dulled mortal nerves.

"Nope," came Natalie's succinct reply, followed by a loud door slam.

"Nat?" Nick asked blindly. She had gotten out of the car, and he could vaguely hear her shuffling around to his side on what he was barely able to determine as sidewalk, but it was still quite disorienting to be suddenly shoved into relative silence like that.

The car door to his right was pulled open, and he quickly readjusted his balance before he fell, mentally cursing himself for leaning so heavily on the door with his forearm. "Sorry, Nick. Didn't realize you were leaning on that," Natalie said with a chuckle as she grabbed hold of his arm and guided him gently out of the car. Although he'd been freed from the hospital, he was still not completely healed.

He could hear faint laughter off to his left, and a group of people talking a fair distance off to his right. A wafting breeze tickled his cheeks and ruffled his hair as he tilted his head, trying to gain his bearings entirely through hearing alone.

"Why am I blindfolded, anyway?" Nick asked playfully, not really wanting to admit how strange it was to feel so disoriented. As a vampire, all of his senses had been enhanced, so having one handicapped had not been nearly so critical as he was finding it now. Now, he was spending all his energy on not tripping or bumping into anything. He desperately hoped that his apprehension wasn't appearing on his face.

"Because this is your first day out of the hospital, and I want it to be special!" Natalie exclaimed.

"Nat, the sheer fact that I'm out of the hospital makes it special," he replied mirthlessly, trying not to groan at the thought of being back there. There was not a chance in Hell they would ever drag him back to that place. He now fully understood the concept of bad hospital food--not to mention the total lack of privacy, something which, as a vampire, he had grown to value above almost all other things. Truthfully, he could now say that he hated hospitals.

"Just be patient," she replied cryptically, guiding him slowly across... Well, the ground was soft, kind of mushy. Grass? Possibly a field... It was an open area, that much he could tell because of the breeze blowing through.

"Now, stand right there!" she said, excitedly.

Nick complied, waiting patiently while he heard her bustle about him. There was a light rustling sound, but he could not for the life of him identify it. After a brief period, he simply gave up trying to figure out what she was doing and quietly listened to her setting stuff out onto the ground.

"All right, you can take off the blindfold now," she said happily, although Nick was able to detect a hint of slight apprehension in her voice.

Hesitantly, he removed the blindfold and blinked a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the light. After eight-hundred years of darkness, his eyes were very sensitive to the light. He had found that it gave him headaches, and had often had to ask the nurse to close the blinds in his room.

Slightly frustrated, he sighed as things finally came into focus. They were in a park, and Natalie had spread out a huge blanket and a picnic basket underneath the lovely shade of a medium-sized tree. His stomach immediately curled at the sight of all the food that she had set out, and more was still peeking out from in the basket.

"It's a, uh, welcome to mortality picnic. I thought we could finally celebrate..." Natalie mumbled, her face falling when she saw his face. "You don't like it..." she sighed disappointedly, crestfallen.

He rushed to reassure her. "Oh, Nat, I'm sorry. I was just surprised. I love it!" he exclaimed, sitting himself gingerly down on the large tablecloth. At the same time, he wondered how he was ever going to eat all of that food... He had managed to hide his slight problem from the nurses, but he doubted that Natalie would miss it after a while. Already, he had lost a bit of weight. His stomach just seemed incapable of making the transition to mortality along with him. Perhaps it had been inactive for simply too long. He doubted that anyone had ever contemplated what would happen when dead organs were essentially reawakened after eight-hundred years.

"That's all right," Natalie interrupted his thoughts, seemingly bashful as she sat down on the mat next to him. Why she would ever have reason to feel that way around him puzzled him, but Nick was not given time to contemplate it as she plunged onward. "So how does it feel to be out in the sun?" she asked, her voice slightly awed. She was staring at him intently, as if she were memorizing every curve of his face.

He flashed a smile, watching the sunlight dance playfully off her brunette curls. She was so beautiful in the light, more so that he could have ever imagined. "It feels wonderful, Nat," he stated truthfully as he leaned back on his hands and basked, truly feeling its warmth on his face for the first time in a very long while. He sighed.

She grinned. "I'm glad," she replied honestly. Stuttering briefly, she seemed at a loss for words as he turned back to look at her. "It's just..." she began, "It's just so incredibly amazing!" she finally blurted out with a blush. "I was so worried at first, but then when I saw you lying there, and it sounds silly, I know, but the only thing I could focus on was the fact that your chest was rising and falling... Here, have a leg," she said playfully, giving him a breaded drumstick from the chicken bucket.

"Uh, thanks," he replied softly, not taking his eyes from her. Reluctantly, he bit off a piece and swallowed. The savory meat tasted wonderful, but he doubted the feeling would last all that long.

After a lengthy, comfortable silence, Natalie started again. "Nick?" she began, extremely hesitantly.

He raised an eyebrow in query, silently answering her request for his attention as he took another bite of chicken. The stuff tasted almost heavenly, and he simply could not resist the temptation to take another bite, despite the fact that he was well aware of the ramifications.

"There was another reason I wanted to do this..." she said hesitantly. "I wanted to... What do you... Is there an us?" she suddenly asked, after stumbling over a few false starts.

He almost choked on the bite of chicken he had in his mouth. "Us?" he asked in surprise. He had not expected their conversation to take this turn so quickly, although he had at least been expecting it. Their relationship, and lack thereof, had pretty much been dictated by the fact that he was a vampire, which he wasn't any longer. Nothing was holding him back now, and she had been bound to bring it up sooner or later, especially lately when he had sensed an increase in the romantic undertones of their exchanges.

She sighed, visibly distressed at his startled expression. "I'm sorry--that was stupid. I shouldn't have brought that up. I don't want to ruin what we already have..."

"Nat," he began softly, but she continued to babble nervously, not really paying any attention to his softly spoken voice.

"I mean, what was I thinking?" she said with a bitter laugh, throwing up her hands. "This is obviously unrequited. Why would a former vampire ever want..."

"Nat," he said a little bit more forcefully, putting the half-eaten drumstick down beside the bucket on his napkin.

"This is just a dead end... hmmm?" She finally finished ranting and looked up at his face, pausing long enough for him to get a word in aside from her name.

He drew in a deep breath and looked at her intently, briefly distracted by her large, blue eyes--so innocent, so lovely... He wondered offhand if she had ever stopped to realize just how beautiful she was. She probably didn't even realize the sheer elegance that she had.

"Nat," he began. "If you want there to be an us, then there is," he stated quietly, not tearing his eyes from hers so that she could see that he meant it.

Her eyes widened a bit as she digested his words. "I..." she whispered, startled at his candor, and looked at her hands. She seemed to be at quite a loss for words lately.

Nick smiled and cupped her chin softly in his hand, bringing her wavering eyes back to look at him. "Nat, do you want there to be an us?" he asked seriously.

"God, yes," she replied fervently, nodding.

"Then there is," he whispered and placed his lips gently on top of hers.

Although surprised at first, she responded quickly. Her arms wrapped around him and her fingers dug deeply into his shoulders as he pulled her closer into a tight embrace. Gripping her head firmly with his hands as he savagely crushed himself up against her, he pulled them roughly up into a kneeling position.

They slammed up against each other as if an insurmountable magnetic force were pulling them together as they tried desperately to get more of each other. "Nick..." she mumbled between his soft caresses and fervent attention, practically collapsing into him.

He paused his attention to her briefly enough to whisper, "What?" beside her ear, so lightly that her head jerked in surprise as his breath tickled her earlobe, before he continued to tease and lick her warm flesh. Almost with minds of their own, his hands migrated lower down to the small of her back, and then lower...

"We can't..." she replied breathlessly as he slid his cool lips slowly down her neck, an area that had been ingrained as an spot of erogenous appeal for so long he found the habit hard to break.

She gasped, her fingers clinging tightly to the small scrunches she'd made with the fabric on the shoulders of his silk shirt. "Doctors said... take... it easy," she managed to moan, her tone one of blissful, frustrated pleasure.

"Screw the doctors," he mumbled, squeezing her lightly, his eyes closed. He inhaled her soft scent, his attention entirely devoted to her.

"But," she protested, but he captured her lips with his own, effectively silencing her as he teased her with his tongue until she accepted the offer. He darted enthusiastically into her mouth as her lips parted to welcome him in earnest.

Bliss--the only word to describe how he felt. After years of denying himself, he found himself suddenly unable to reign himself in. All of his pent-up emotions were exploding in rapid-fire succession, all onto her in a fiery, hungry passion. Heaven, he was sure, would have to feel like this.

Until she reached up and pushed him off none too gently.

"Nick," she panted, flushed and obviously quite aroused. "Can we at least move this to a more private area?" she finally managed to get out, once she had caught her breath.

Eyes darting left and right to the various people milling around, Nick suddenly recalled that they were in the middle of a very public area. "Um, yeah," he replied sheepishly as he hastily helped her pick up their picnic food and mat.

This was far from over.


	10. Chapter 10

Schanke slammed his hand down on the desk. "This isn't making ANY SENSE!" he growled under his breath, staring at the paperwork sitting in front of him.

Jacob looked up from his own, very large stack of paperwork. "Don, relax, man. You're not going to solve anything with that frame of mind. I think you've been looking at that for too long..." Jacob tried to soothe Schanke, but it didn't work.

"No!" Schanke snapped, but then he grew more calm. "No, I can't stop looking. I OWE it to Nick to solve this one..." he added, frustrated.

Jacob looked moderately peeved, and he threw his pencil down on the desk. "Fine, then. Destroy yourself from stress, see what I care, it's not like I have to deal with you after Friday..." he replied harshly, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Detective Donald Schanke?"

Schanke looked up to see a mail carrier standing above his desk with an expectant look upon his face. Intent on staring over the records of the conversation he had had with Ms. Kaldereski, Schanke practically let them fly from his hands in surprise when his eyes met the carrier's, and he couldn't help but see Jacob sniggering at his nervous reaction.

Trying to look nonchalant, Schanke quickly re-gathered his wits and raised an eyebrow. "Yes?" he asked.

The carrier placed a small brown package none too gently on the desk. "I need you to sign for this, sir."

Schanke met the man's obsidian eyes and felt his chest constrict. Something seemed... "Sir? You need to sign this," the carrier added, an impatient look spreading across his face as he glanced at his watch.

Schanke looked to Jacob, but his younger partner was still laughing under his breath. The barely contained expression of merriment was spewing forth from Jacob's twinkling eyes, even if the muscles in his face kept him looking like some small semblance of seriousness. "Um, yeah," Schanke muttered, fumbling for a pen.

The carrier smiled and thanked him, although it looked like more of a smirk than a smile to Schanke. The muscles around the carrier's eyes remained icy cold, partially hidden behind a mop of greasy, dusted-brown hair.

Schanke shrugged as the carrier hurried off, marveling at the people that the postal service seemed to hire these days, and looked down at the package sitting on his desk on top of his mounting pile of paperwork. The breath caught short in his throat when he saw the return address.

"Jacob? Is this some kind of joke? Did you send this?" Schanke asked suspiciously as he turned to package over in his hands, noting that the contained smile was still evident on Jacob's face.

Upon hearing Schanke's words, however, Jacob's upturned lips flattened out and the sparkle in his eyes dimmed. "What? No, I was just laughing at you. Not stressed--yeah right..." he muttered as he stood up. "Why, what is it?"

Schanke looked down again. "I don't know. The return address is missing..." he explained warily.

Jacob tensed. "You don't think it's a bomb, do you?" he asked softly.

Schanke thought for a moment. His rational side was telling him to get the package checked out before he opened it. Yet, despite the alarm bells ringing off in his head, his fingers slipped to the tape and started scissoring through it with his nails. The clear scotch tape came off of the thick brown paper easily, and he ripped into the packaging as quickly and carefully as he could manage.

With a series of several light thuds, a stack of snapshots and a folded piece of notebook paper fell out of the package and onto the table. Both Schanke and Jacob squeezed their eyes shut for a moment before they realized that nothing was going to explode in their faces.

Cautiously, Schanke cracked one eye open, and then the other. He picked up the deck of photos and looked at the first one, blinked, and then looked at it again as he felt a numbing coldness spreading through his limbs.

There, in the blurry darkness, was one tiny figure slumped up against something, and another had his arm extended out in front of him, pointing into the darkness at something outside the range of the photo.

The second shot was a close-up. A pale, slack-jawed face framed with sweat-pasted blond hair, an eerie glow cast upon the skin by the dim streetlamps

Schanke never made it to the third shot as his hands began to shake and he dropped the pile of snapshot after snapshot, each of Nick at some particular angle. Each more gruesome than the last. There had to be at least thirty of them. Possibly forty.

"I just might kill him, next time. Teasing you guys just ain't the trip it used to be..." Jacob mumbled, reading from the small note that had accompanied the photos. "Don, it's..."

"It's a goddamn sicko, that's what," Schanke whispered, turning pale. "Man, the mail carrier... Jacob, get the mail carrier..." Schanke groaned as he swallowed thickly. He should have known that that feeling he had been getting was something other than just his overblown imagination.

Jacob nodded and ran off without a word.


	11. Chapter 11

Natalie couldn't believe it. The whole situation had to be a dream. One moment she had been doubtful of a friendship, and the next she had been wrapped around Nick as if she were an appendage of him, rather than a separate individual. They had made it to the lift before they couldn't keep their hands off each other any longer, and somehow they had managed to make their way up to the bedroom, but it had been quite a slow trip, with many interruptions.

"May I?" she felt Nick whisper into her ear, his hot breath tickling the skin of her earlobe. She felt him fumbling with the buttons of her blouse, and she could only moan in response, leaning back to expose herself to him. The motion was one of trust, absolute acceptance of the situation, and she could honestly say that she had never done so for any other man. She was his and only his.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said with a soft chuckle as he kissed her. She groaned in pleasure as he slid down her neck and then to her shoulder. There was a moment of bitter chill as he took off her top, but then his warm hands were all over her, squeezing, rubbing, touching... She doubted she would ever feel cold again.

Running a hand through his flaxen mane of unruly curls, she grabbed him tightly and held him close, almost not wanting to let the foreplay continue, so content was she that she was finally sharing even this much with him. She kissed him, sucking fervently at his upper lip and then moving to his lower before she plunged her tongue into his welcoming mouth.

His roving hands found their way to the clasp of her bra, and soon her naked skin was pressed up against the soft silk of his shirt. Her pleated skirt had also somehow ended up on the floor, bunched up at her feet, although she didn't recall how or when. But she didn't care.

"Oh, Nat..." he groaned softly.

They crashed onto the bed, freefalling backwards onto the mattress. Barely paying attention as they bounced back up, the ministrations continued. "Nat, please, let me see you..." he finally managed to groan, backing up slightly.

He lay back on his side, propping his head up on his hand. His eyes softened as she stilled for him, but she started to get a bit flushed after he continued to stare as if she were some well-sculpted Greek statue. "Nat, please don't be embarrassed," he implored her. "You're exquisite, like a fine wine..." he added sensuously, smiling strangely like the cat who'd just eaten the canary.

She smiled back at him, noticing for the first time how uneven their state of dress was. "Let's just see how you like being on exhibition," she commented playfully as she began to attack the buttons of his black silk shirt with a certain desperation she had never felt before. Lord, how she wanted him...

He laughed heartily, and soon his warm hands captured hers and worked the buttons with her, helping her. She gasped at the unexpected contact and briefly paused, catching his soft gaze in her own. "You have no idea how long I've wanted this..." she whispered as she slid the shirt off his shoulders, exposing his bare chest.

He smiled warmly. "Probably as long as I have..." he hazarded, and she could only grin in response.

She marveled at the healthy curves of his pectorals as he softly heaved breath after glorious breath. He was alive. Really alive. The thought took some getting used to.

His hands clasped around her waist and tried to pull her towards him. She could tell that he intended to capture her in another one of his mind-blowing kisses, but mischievously, she resisted. "Stop that," she scolded playfully, batting at him. "Let me drive for a while."

"Nat..." he rasped. His eyes, while they held the same amount of affection as they had throughout the encounter, had grown slightly more tinged with desperation.

"Good things come to those who wait," she whispered back, and she couldn't help but laugh when she saw him immediately strain to remain still. The whole struggle was a lost cause, but at least he was making the effort...

"Now," she began, "what would happen if I..." She didn't finish her sentence, letting her hands do the talking for her. She slid slowly down his chest, down to the supple skin of his abdomen, which was now wildly expanding and deflating as Nick fought for a single, steady, oxygenated breath.

And then everything halted. Nick sucked in a breath as if he'd been burned, but the look on his face was not one of pain, rather one of embarrassment. Natalie belatedly noticed that her hand was running over the puckered scar where the bullet had penetrated his skin. It was rough, and scabbed, and ugly. But, she didn't care. None of that mattered as much as Nick seemed to think it did.

"Nick, it's all right..." she assured him with a light pat, which seemed to have a calming effect on his worries, but she didn't really give him time to dwell on it. Fumbling only momentarily with the top button of his jeans, she slipped her hand down and grasped his length. With just that slight touch, he grew firm and hard in her hand, and Nick moaned pitifully as he began to painfully fill his pants.

Having mercy, she took her hand out briefly and slid his pants slowly down. She turned her head back to look at him and was gratified to see that he was no better off than a drowning man flailing for a last breath. His eyes were closed, his breath ragged, and still she continued the sweet torture, sliding his briefs down his legs with such painful slowness that even she grew frustrated. Even she was breathing heavily now, but she forced herself to calm down. There was no way that she was going to let this experience end because she and her partner were too sexually deprived to have some patience.

She slipped her hand back down and cupped him. Nick flailed desperately, clawing at the sheets before he regained what little equilibrium he had left. "Nat..." he complained, panting. "Please, let me..."

"Nope, this is my show, for now," she said slyly, trying not to let him see how hard she was finding it to restrain just herself, let alone him. She'd have to be sure to give him kudos later for his self-control.

"You've got... got to be... kiDING me..." he panted breathlessly, accentuating his speech as she stroked him.

"Nope," she replied.

"The best... hand... job... I've had... in centuries... and you won't even... let... let me play..." he rasped, looking painfully at her, small beads of sweat forming at his brow. Desperation burned in his eyes.

Smiling, she merely replied, "That's what makes it good."

He groaned and gyrated in her hand, unable to keep himself still any longer as he ground his hips relentlessly towards her working fingers. He was close now, and she frenzied her pace. The friction built wonderfully. He arched back wildly, clawing at the sheets.

"Nat, please... I can't... I..." he groaned weakly before she sent him completely over the edge. He cried out as he thrust wildly in her hands, his orgasm sending him into sweet oblivion.

She let herself fall onto the bed next to him as he lay there breathing heavily, eyes closed. After several moments of silence, Nick finally managed to recover his voice. "God, Nat... That was..."

"Good?" she asked, a twinkle in her eye.

"Spectacular," he purred. "I only owe it to you to repay you..." he added with a lopsided grin. She realized only too late what he had planned, and shrieked in surprise as his fingers descended upon her, tickling her mercilessly.

And just when she thought she would die from laughter, he captured her mouth with his, his hands roving over her skin in sensuous, thrilling patterns that she reduced her to shivers. "Nick... please..."

"Hmmm, now that sounds familiar," he growled huskily. She arched backwards as he massaged his way down her torso. He was turning out to be much more aggressive than she ever would have expected.

"My, what virile parts you have!" she exclaimed playfully as she got a glance of his lower body.

He smiled. "All the better to pleasure you with, my dear," he deadpanned with a mock salute, reaching briefly to the nightstand for the condom he'd put there before things had gotten too serious. Despite the raging hormones, they'd managed to stay sane enough on the trip back to make a quick stop at the drugstore.

She laughed in response. "Need any help with that?" she asked, wiggling her eyebrows provocatively.

"No, I think my friend here has had enough of your feminine wiles for one day," he replied with a silly grin, focusing his attention momentarily towards the piece of latex in his hand. He quickly unrolled it down his length, almost making her wonder where on Earth he'd learned that. Granted, he wasn't entitled to the Mr. Morality award, but she doubted he had had a lot of opportunity with mortals, and that was the only circumstance she could think of that would require a condom...

He didn't really give her a chance to ponder the idea further, because as soon as he was finished, he was all over her. She could only observe breathlessly, her hands in a death grip around his tense lower back, as he sucked, teased her skin. "Nick!" she cried as her teeth began to chatter wildly, so dizzy was she in the sensation. But as soon as she thought she had his patterns figured out, his mouth trailed to the middle of her cleavage, and then downward, moving with deliciously tantalizing slowness when he reached the dip between her ribs. Carefully, he made a ring around her navel and then made his way back up to her mouth.

She gasped as he continued his relentless assault. "Oh, God!" she cried when his hands roamed down and stroked her. She felt her panties slip down her legs as he pulled them off. "Please..." she whimpered, amazed at how quickly he had turned the tables on her, making her the submissive to his dominant.

"Are you ready, Nat?" he groaned, showering her with soft, butterfly kisses. The sweet sensations made her feel such unparalleled neediness that she suspected she would go out of her mind soon if he didn't do something. Her whole lower abdomen was now tight with anticipation. Tight, and ready, and waiting, and wanting, but ever the gentlemen, he'd actually bothered to ask.

"Yes, yes, please..." she managed to sigh deliriously.

Her words were all the encouragement he required. And with swiftness she hadn't realized he still possessed, he plunged into her and filled her, impaling her. She felt split in two. Trying to keep the dizzying passion from making her faint, she cried out. And all at once she felt whole, connected.

His hands and lips resumed their lustful attack on her as he began to thrust. Slowly at first, rocking evenly, she found she could easily rise to meet him. He dipped in and out of her, pulling out of her to his tip, only to plunge deep within to the hilt once again. The friction generated such heat that she felt like she was burning apart from her very core. She panted wildly, returning his kisses as he offered them, and offering some of her own.

Breathlessly, she found it harder and harder to keep up with his virulent pace. Somewhere in the midst of her ecstasy she'd missed the fact that his attentions had stopped, and he, shortly followed by she, became completely slave to desire. The tightness within her was gloriously painful, and she cried out with each one of his powerful, pistoning thrusts, but the rush of blood was so thunderous in her ears that she could no longer hear his own loud groans.

And all at once, her world crumbled down around her, and drowned her senses. She felt her straining muscles all unclench at once in blissful, heart-stopping climax, shortly followed by Nick's loud growl of triumph and one final, jarring thrust. Most unexpectedly, however, as she felt him twitching with abandon within her, he collapsed on top of her and she felt his mouth at her neck, sucking desperately at the flesh until he softened and slipped out of her.

She said nothing as he sank down beside her, completely spent. Did some of the vampire linger? She grew instantly curious, but was too exhausted to care. Feeling her limbs slowly turn to mush as she lay there, she realized that it didn't really matter right then. Nothing really mattered except the fact that she was there, in his strong arms, despite all the forces that had seemed allied together to keep them apart. After a long and terrible uphill battle, they had won. Finally. And it felt damn good. "I love you," she whispered, and snuggled deeply into his arms.

"I love you too, Nat," he replied softly, already heavy with sleep, but awake enough to give her a reassuring squeeze. She smiled, her heart giving a little flutter at his words, ones that she had longed to hear for so long and yet never had, and allowed the rhythm of his soft breathing, deep and steady, lull her to sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

She did not, however, remain asleep for long. A sound awoke her, and her eyes snapped open in surprise. "Nick?" she murmured sleepily as she turned and reached out beside her, only to have her hands meet cold, silken sheets.

Hearing the strange sound again, she lazily opened her eyes and looked around the dark room. Everything was as it should be, except for the fact that Nick wasn't there. Sitting up, she glanced sidelong at the digital clock which read in blaring red numerals, '1:02 AM'.

"Nick?" she called out, louder this time, growing slightly nervous when she received no reply, or any indication that he was there. She stood up, wincing as her feet hit the shocking cold floor.

The sound came again, muffled as though it were underwater, and this time, Natalie was awake enough to identify the location of the source. She glanced around nervously, looking for some possible weapon she could use, fear rising in her chest. Something was wrong, and it was already a well-known fact that someone was gunning for Nick. What if...? She didn't even want to finish the thought. Not now.

Sighing, she realized there was absolutely nothing available that she could use, so she took a deep breath and found her resolve. She crept up to the door of the bathroom and poked it so lightly that she was surprised when it swung open with ease. So prepared was she for a crazed axe murderer to leap out from behind the shower curtain and shish-kebob her on the spot, that several moments passed before the sight before her registered in full.

Nick was curled over the toilet bowl like saran wrap, bare-chested and quivering, in a pair of old sweatpants that were at least a size too big for him. She could practically see his ribs ratcheting upwards, rippling under his pale, supple skin as he heaved ferociously. From the sound of it, he had lost his stomach contents a long while ago, and his innards were just refusing to calm down.

"Nick?" Nat whispered, rushing to his side. She'd never seen someone look so ill, and for the first time ever, she saw an individual take on a truly greenish cast.

"Nat, I'm fine... go back to bed..." Nick groaned, not looking up at her, and not once letting his white-knuckle grip of the white porcelain loosen.

Such an understatement, such a downright lie--Natalie would have smacked him if it were not for his current, and very poor, condition. "Nick, you're not fine!" Natalie exclaimed worriedly, massaging his quaking back. "You're anything but fine!"

He would have answered, but he was racked with a terrible bout of dry heaving, looking for all the world that he was suffering from the worst flu she had seen in her life. But she knew that he wasn't sick, and there was no way something like the flu could've hit him so fast, at least not that she knew of.

"Nick? What happened?" she asked, fearing that perhaps he had somehow ingested some poison or toxin, something--anything logical that would explain why he was suffering.

After several long moments, he sat back on his haunches and looked at her darkly, rocking on the balls of his feet like a buoy in a wind-swept lake. "Chicken..." he replied weakly, his voice barely above a whisper.

She raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Chicken?" she asked incredulously.

"From the picnic," he added. "I haven't been able to keep much down since... since..." His sentence was interrupted when his stomach spasmed wildly, and he clawed his way back like a drowning man to his previous hunched position over the porcelain bowl.

Natalie's eyes widened, realizing for the first time that he looked a lot thinner than usual. She had attributed it to his injury, but if what he was saying were true, it was malnutrition... "Nick, why didn't you say anything?" she asked frantically. "You could lose too much weight, or become dehydrated, or, or worse! You have to think about those things now..." she cried, all the while wondering what on earth could have caused this anathema to solid food.

"I thought... thought it would go away..." he whispered pathetically, wisely not meeting her eyes as he put forth his weak excuse.

"Well, you still should've told me!" she remarked indignantly, but immediately softened when she saw his pained, nauseated look. Groaning inwardly, she shook her head. He was so prone to keeping things to himself that sometimes everything just got a bit out of hand...

Without another word of complaint, she settled herself down next to him and started rubbing his back, hoping that his stomach would finally calm down. As Nick's heaving slowly quieted, she thought about dragging him out shopping later and giving him an introductory tour of the drug store, only to find herself wishing fervently that she had done so sooner. She simply hadn't thought he would need anything like that so quickly after his release from the hospital.

She should have realized that such a major transition wasn't going to be a walk in the park. There was no quick fix--it just wasn't possible.

A heavy sigh perforated the newfound silence, and she was relieved to find that he was finally relaxing. As she leaned herself up against the cool glass of the shower stall, he let himself fall back into her embrace, and she found herself again in awe of the warmth that his skin generated--the feel of the light rise and fall of his chest within her arms as his lungs brought air to his body.

She ran her hand up the smooth skin of his abdomen and was gratified with a light shiver. Warm breath flowed softly over her arms as he groaned, although whether it was from pleasure or not, she could not tell. "Nat..." he said quietly, shifting lightly in her embrace. "What's wrong with me?" he asked, worriedly.

"Nick, your body has been put through some terrible stress. Not only is your heart working at about, gee, six-hundred times the rate it's been going at for the last eight centuries or so, but you've got systems coming back online that haven't been in use for just as long... I don't even want to get into the fact that an armor-piercing bullet decided to wreak havoc with you..." she explained, subconsciously gripping him tighter.

He remained silent, quivering slightly in her arms.

"Nick?" she asked softly, laying her chin to rest on his shoulder as he curled his lithe body like a cat.

"It's just," he paused, unable to find the words he needed to complete his thought. A small noise emanated from the back of his throat, like he was trying to say something but couldn't quite get it out. "Hard," he finally finished.

Natalie nodded. "I can imagine," she replied.

"No, Nat. I really don't think that you can," he responded darkly. The words that had been meant to console him had obviously been taken the wrong way, but he heaved a sigh and immediately apologized. "Sorry..." he said, realizing how biting his words must have seemed to her ears.

But she understood. Eight-hundred years of habit had to be erased, and she could imagine how difficult it was, but she doubted she could make an entirely accurate picture... She kissed his well-muscled shoulder lightly, gliding her lips across his bare skin, but she couldn't help noticing how much he began to shiver as she met the juncture between his neck and his shoulder.

Pausing a moment, she felt his breathing increase, and with a sly grin, she bit down lightly with her teeth, running her incisors along the pulsing bulge of his jugular. She stopped as a gasp emanated from his lips--a desperate cry of... pleasure? He flailed in her grasp, and she licked her lips, surprised that she could get such a reaction out of him from a simple playful nip.

Her own burning curiosity was simply too much to contain.

"Nick? Is that... area... still... good for you?" she finally managed to blurt, surprised at her own shyness about the subject. Usually, it was Nick who would avoid such intimate conversation.

She could almost feel the sheepish grin burning its way across his face, even though she couldn't see it. "Err... it would appear so," he replied softly, and she could see the pinkish flush of embarrassment spreading over his skin.

"Is that..." she began, managing to stop herself from marveling at the fact that he could blush now, "is that why you tried to... to bite me? When we... Well, earlier."

He stiffened, his muscles turning tense and rigid, and she could almost feel the air around them turn frigid. "What?" he asked, amazement flooding his voice. "I didn't..." he began, but when he wrenched his neck around and saw the angry red blotch on the skin above her jugular, he stopped cold and just looked at it in horror.

Nick stood roughly, not meeting her gaze as he mumbled a terse apology and exited, leaving Nat sitting on the cold floor alone and bewildered. She shook her head. What on Earth had just happened?

Steadily, she rose to her feet and walked back out into the bedroom. Nick was there, roughly pulling on a pair of jeans at the same time as trying to pull a sweater over his head, and truth be told, he just didn't have the coordination to manage it. He tripped and cursed lightly under his breath, but before she could even blink an eye, he had righted himself and was working on his socks.

"Nick? What did I say? I was just wondering..." she tried to explain, tried to tell him that it didn't matter.

His eyes darted to her sharply, and she felt strangely like a bird caught in the stare of a snake. She heard a low, strange noise emanating from his throat, almost as if he were trying to growl, but couldn't quite muster the vocal agility to do so, another strange remnant from his recent conversion.

"Nat, do you have any idea, how long I've dreamed of biting you?" he snapped as he yanked on his wristwatch.

Natalie felt as though she had been slapped across the face, the biting sting of his words bringing a flush of hurt to her cheeks. "No," she replied tersely, unable to see where he was going with this conversation.

He stared a moment, his gaze hard and cold, but something in his eyes was telling her that this was a front. Pain lingered in the cool blue depths of his eyes like a silk-screen curtain. "I did--a lot. I used to dream about it," he said, his voice suddenly breaking.

"Nick, that's nothing to be ashamed of..." Natalie whispered in reply. She was well aware of the sexual nature of the bite, Hell, she had seen the effects of the blood on him, the state of arousal it put him in...

"Yes. It IS," he practically growled. "You're not some sacrificial lamb. You're a person," he stressed.

She sighed, attempting to approach him, but he shied away. "And so are you..." she tried to reason with him.

"Then why did I try to bite you?" he asked coldly, and she remained silent, unable to come up with an answer.

"I'm stuck, Nat. I'm obviously not a vampire anymore, but I still think I am one. Nat, I still have those dreams, I still have those desires. I can't..." he muttered, but didn't finish his sentence, spinning on his heels suddenly and stalking out of the room as his temper finally won the battle.

Natalie watched him go, wanted desperately to chase after him, but knew it would not be of any use. He needed to blow off steam. He needed... help.

And she wasn't so sure that she was the one who could give it.


	13. Chapter 13

Nick stormed out into the frigid air, yanking on his duster at the last minute. The reasonably warm weather from earlier yesterday that had permitted him and Natalie their picnic seemed to have disappeared into oblivion. His breath clawed outward from his mouth like misty, gnarled talons, and he was surprised to realize that the bitter chill actually hurt. His nose and ears and fingers stung as he attempted to cover himself more, but the action was of no use. The air was freezing, and now so was he.

He growled in frustration as he fumbled shakily for his keys and sat down roughly behind the wheel of his beloved green car. The car started with ease, despite the cold weather, and he was out on the streets driving mindlessly before he even realized he was actually out in traffic.

Taking his usual illegal parking space in front of The Raven, he got out and was greeted with the smell of sweat and the heat of writhing human bodies as soon as the bouncer granted him entry, although not without a strange look. He surveyed the dance floor, thinking it strange that he still thought of them as mortals. What the Hell was he, if not mortal?

He noticed several vampires lingering in the shadows, looking at him strangely, almost with contempt as they bled back into the darkness and out of sight. Doing his best to ignore them, he sat at the bar and put his head in his hands.

The place didn't even have the same feel anymore. With his dulled senses, the music and the dark atmosphere were less jarring and more annoying. He found that he could not see well into the dark mass of moving bodies. He was barely able to identify the movement as that of dozens of different individuals rather than one giant, coiling snake.

His ears and nose burned as they finally began to warm back up, a rather unpleasant sensation, and he suddenly found himself wondering why on Earth he had come here. There was nothing here for him now. There hadn't really been anything here for him before. Even as a vampire, he had not been of the social type. Loud atmospheres like this had just made him uncomfortable, and now he found them even worse.

He sneezed as his stinging nose finally returned to a comfortable temperature.

"Ah, Nicholas. I suppose that it would be appropriate to say, God bless you, now, would it not?" a familiar voice oozed.

Nick felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end, and his breath caught in his chest. So this was what a racing heart felt like... He had long forgotten. "LaCroix," he stated neutrally, not looking at his Sire as he sat down beside him, and yet, a part of him was glad that his master had taken notice of him. He didn't know why.

"So, how does it feel?" LaCroix asked softly, motioning to the bartender for a drink as he spoke.

"How does what feel?" Nick replied noncommittally. He had been foolish to think that LaCroix would not have noticed his change.

LaCroix stared at him coldly. "Do not be coy, Nicholas. I am well aware that you are no longer amongst the undead," he said smoothly, as if he were discussing the weather. "I felt you turn. A most... unique experience."

The silent energy crackling between them was almost palpable, and Nick was slightly startled when the bartender appeared. Before he walked wordlessly away, the dark man set down a glass of what Nick was sure was the 'house special' down in front of LaCroix. Nick, however, could not help but notice the bartender's strange glance in his direction before he left.

"The Community is reeling, Nicholas. A few would even like to know how you did it..." LaCroix continued calmly. "As would I..."

Nick raised an eyebrow in surprise. How had the entire Community heard about this? He wasn't trying to broadcast it or anything. Hell, this was the first time he had even seen a vampire since he had been shot, at least, it was the first time he was aware of. "I don't know, LaCroix," Nick finally replied after taking a deep breath. "It just... happened..." he explained lamely.

LaCroix, to Nick's utter surprise, slyly smiled, his lips stretching wide, not a gesture of happiness by any means. "You do not sound particularly happy about this. Dare I begin to give you, ah, what is it these days? An 'I told you so' speech?" he asked, taking a sip of his mixed blood wine.

Nick eyed the glass as the cool neon lights sparkled off of it as though through the facets of a crystal. He felt his chest constrict at LaCroix's words. He had not come here to argue. "I don't want to fight with you, LaCroix," he stated simply, looking glumly into his hands. Why had he come here? If he wanted to avoid a confrontation, walking into his Sire's den, which practically crawled with the Community, was not the way to go about things.

"It would be a rather moot point to fight with me, Nicholas. You would lose," LaCroix replied simply, but the menace in his voice was not lost on Nick.

Nick's eyes narrowed, but he felt pain, pain at this subtle rejection. "Please, LaCroix, I didn't come here to argue..." he pleaded, looking squarely into his Sire's cold blue eyes.

"Then why did you come here, Nicholas? Get to the point..." LaCroix stated, his voice growing somewhat irritated.

"I..." Nick began, but he could see that excuses were pointless. LaCroix was merely tolerating him now. "Never mind," he whispered. "I'll go," he continued dejectedly, rising to his feet, but as he turned, a cold hand gripped his shoulder firmly.

"Nicholas," LaCroix called after him softly, and Nick turned to meet his eyes. An apology was not spoken--LaCroix would never do that--but Nick could tell that it was implied. There was a pause. The sounds that surrounded them seemingly came to a silencing halt as LaCroix pondered something, and Nick found himself missing the link that used to exist between them. He was staring a blank wall now, and he could not tell for the life of him what his Sire was thinking, but he prayed that the tacit truce they had reached still remained intact.

"Come. We can talk in my office..." his Sire finally stated.

Nick felt as if a weight lifted from his chest, and he sighed in relief as LaCroix led him through the crowds to his back office. The loud bass of the music was muted to a dull background noise as LaCroix swung the door shut behind them, as if someone had placed a pillow over the speakers. Nick watched apprehensively as LaCroix seated himself regally at his desk, motioning silently for Nick to sit as well.

Cold silence sat upon them like a blanket, LaCroix merely staring, taking occasional sips from his wine goblet, and Nick floundering to think of something to say.

"Nicholas, if you wish to talk, please do so. Otherwise, I have other engagements..." LaCroix finally prodded.

Nick sighed. "I... I don't know what to say. I don't know what you want me to say..." he finally admitted, looking down at the floor, the grandfather clock, anything but LaCroix's steely eyes.

His Master did not respond, but Nick could feel his stare boring into his head like a laser. "Please, LaCroix, I just... I don't know what to do."

LaCroix took a breath, clasping his large hands in front of him on the desk. "Nicholas, if you expect me to give you impartial advice, I sincerely doubt that you will leave this meeting feeling satisfied..."

Nick slumped in his seat. "Do you think I was right?" he asked, feeling hot, salty tears form in his eyes, but he denied them their right to fall, squinting his lashes shut tightly until the tight feeling in his chest lessened.

LaCroix quirked an eyebrow, but otherwise remained expressionless. "Nicholas, I do so hope that you do not expect me to answer that seriously..."

The heat of a bright red flush spread over his cheeks, and Nick cringed further backwards into his chair. He hadn't come for ridicule, just an honest answer, but it was an idle wish, to think that LaCroix would actually provide him with one. "Please," he prodded, "do you think that I was right to search for my mortality?"

"No."

The answer was quick, and cold, as he had expected.

"Please, if you cast aside the fact that you're so obsessed with keeping me under your tight leash, can you really, honestly say that my wishes were wrong?" Nick asked, practically begging to hear what he so desperately wanted to, but he did not receive his wish.

"Yes," LaCroix responded calmly, barely taking an additional second to ponder the question on the grounds of the extra condition that Nick had put forth.

Nick felt as though he were deflating, his resolve slowly dissolving into the woodwork. "Why?" he asked, barely biting back the threatening wave of emotions. He was headed for a cliff, and he wasn't so sure that he could stop in time.

LaCroix actually appeared to plan his response in advance, this time, taking a few seconds to ponder the question. "Nicholas, as much as I admire your many strengths, your greatest weakness is that you do not see consequences very well. You have lived the majority of your life as a vampire, and I do not see how you can expect to revert to form so easily. Mortality is not synonymous with redemption. I wish that you would realize that..." LaCroix replied carefully, as though he expected Nick to explode at any moment.

Nick looked at LaCroix, his eyes pleading. "Please... help me... I can't... I'm still thinking like a vampire, even though I'm not. I don't... I don't know how to handle this..." He needed help. Badly. And he didn't know who to go to for it. Somehow, he had managed to delude himself into thinking that LaCroix would actually provide him with advice.

LaCroix sighed, looking somewhat pained despite his stony expression. "Nicholas, the only aid that I can give you, you would not be willing to receive," he stated, resigned.

Nick felt like his world was crumbling down around him. He nodded and got up, accepting LaCroix's tacit dismissal with dismay, shoulders slumped.

And as he closed the door behind him, like a sixth sense he felt several pairs of unseen eyes on him. He shrugged them off, but he couldn't help but wonder what had ever possessed him to come.

LaCroix was the last person on Earth who would ever willingly help him become comfortable with his newfound mortality.

He should have known.

* * *

"Where did you go?" Natalie asked softly as he slid the door of the lift open.

Nick was slightly startled that she was waiting for him there on the black leather sofa. "You waited for me?" he asked dumbly, shrugging off his coat as if it were an unwanted second skin.

She nodded silently, reaching out with her hands, motioning for him to come to her. He gratefully complied. "Where did you go?" she repeated as he settled himself next to her.

"I saw LaCroix," he replied, and he felt her stiffen. "Just to talk," he quickly added.

Natalie swallowed. "And what did he say?"

"Nothing helpful," he stated glumly.

"Ah," she replied after an awkward silence.

"Nat, I'm sorry I ran out like that. I didn't... I didn't think," he finally stated, the apology rushing out as if his mind's floodgates had been released.

Natalie grinned at him. "Nick, it's all right. You're going through a tough time. I didn't realize how tough until you left and I had a chance to think about it."

Nick leaned over, encircling his arms around her. "I just... I don't know how to stop thinking like a vampire," he stated softly, pausing. She turned to look him in the eye, her warm eyes prodding him to continue. "I... I kind of miss it," he finally admitted, turning his eyes down towards the couch.

But to his surprise, Natalie actually smiled. "Nick, it's all right for you to miss it. It's all right. I would expect you to... Please don't be ashamed... The vampire was a part of you for a long time. It will take time to get used to being mortal," she stressed, emphasizing her words with a kiss.

He sighed as he leaned back, her advice grounding him and making him feel sane, just as it often had before. "Thank you, Nat. Thank you for understanding..." he replied sincerely.

"Hey, that's my job. Isn't it?" she replied with a laugh. "Now come on. Us mortals need sleep..."

He grinned as she pulled him to his feet and he allowed her to lead him back to bed.


	14. Chapter 14

"Nigel Evans."

Schanke blinked as a rap sheet at least ten pages long appeared before him. The picture matched the supposed mail carrier to the 't'. A shiver ratcheted down his spine at the look of those cold, black eyes staring back at him from on the paper. Damn. DAMN!

He slammed his hand down on the desk. "I let him get away," he whispered vengefully, trying to ignore the biting fury nipping at the back of his mind.

Captain Cohen looked at him calmly, although from his years under her command, Schanke was able to identify a small quiver of worry flutter about the corners of her mouth and subtly around the lines clawing outward from her eyes. "They caught him once in the States for a minor offence," she began. "He was released shortly after. Since then, he's been leaving a trail of maimed police officers from California to New York. It seems he's made his way across the border and into our jurisdiction."

Schanke felt sick to his stomach, and from the look on his temporary partner's face, so did Jacob. "But... Why? Why go through all this trouble just to hurt people?"

Jacob hissed in a breath. "Well, if I were an evil weirdo like this, I might find myself getting off on the power-trip," he stated sarcastically, his voice wavering slightly with revulsion at the thought.

Schanke looked at Jacob in disgust, but Cohen silenced him before he had a chance to retort. "Detective Michaels basically just paraphrased the first line of the psych report. I don't know... I suppose nearly killing someone and then letting them go would give you a feeling of superiority, especially if it's a police officer. A police officer is someone who has been trained to defend himself, and..."

"The bigger the game, the better the trophy," Schanke finished. "Man, that's sick. Really sick..." Cohen shrugged, detached, and returned to her office, leaving the detective work to them where it belonged.

"One thing I don't understand, though," began Jacob, "is why on Earth he would hire some Goth bimbo to do the shooting for him?"

Schanke swallowed heavily as the answer occurred to him. "Because he wanted to take the pictures..."

"Because who wanted to take pictures?" The quiet voice came from over Schanke's shoulder, startling him almost out of his skin before he was able to recover.

"Nick? When? What? You're not supposed to be back until Monday!" Schanke exclaimed, leaping from his chair and grabbing Nick in a huge bear hug. Nick, surprisingly, allowed this, although he didn't return the gesture and merely stood patiently, and very stiffly.

"Ah, I got restless," he explained hesitantly as Schanke finally got the message and backed away. "Nat told me to go to work or she'd make me take part in some fool culinary debacle..." Nick's face was serious, but it looked for all the world to Schanke like his doom-and-gloom partner had just made a joke.

Schanke grinned stupidly. "Well, this is just no good..." he babbled sarcastically. "I had a welcome back party all planned out and..."

"You're kidding," Nick stated, interrupting Schanke's soon-to-be diatribe.

Schanke shook his head. "Nope. Oh, uh, Nick, this is Jacob Michaels, your temporary replacement..." he said, introducing his blond partner to his brunette one. Immediately, he could tell that there was no love lost between the two. Nick remained detached and forcefully cheerful as he shook Jacob's barely accepting hand.

He shrugged. Nick was back in form, nothing new there. "We're just discussing your would-be assassin. Turns out he's not an assassin, just a very sick loon on the wrong side of sadistic," Schanke explained.

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Schanke? Is there actually a right side of sadistic?" he asked, but his usual mask was destroyed by the twinkle in his eyes.

Schanke merely rolled his eyes in response, choosing not to say anything as Nick sat down at his desk and ran his hands slowly across the surface. "Ah, I never once in my life thought I would be happy to see this much paperwork," he stated woefully.

"Stir-crazy?" Jacob interjected with a grin.

Nick looked up and regarded him for a moment. "Nothing but," he responded.

Schanke didn't miss how Nick's eyes darted to him before sweeping back to Jacob. His partner had never been one to hand out trust on a silver platter, and he suspected that this was just another one of those instances of Nick's patented extreme caution. Schanke shook his head. He would have paid a month's salary to learn why Nick was so damn closed off.

"So," Nick began. "Do we have a possible location of this guy? Anything other than an ID?"

"Nope. He got away. We can't get anything out of Miss Kaldereski. She's just been one big fountain of sarcasm and sly smiles. No info there," Jacob answered before Schanke had a chance to respond.

Nick shrugged, his face reverting to type, a complete emotionless mask. Schanke couldn't even tell if Nick was bothered by the fact that they were discussing the people who had nearly killed him. Hell, if their positions had been reversed, he didn't even want to think about the emotional possibilities of that one.

"Well, maybe I can make a trip down to lock up and have a word with Miss Kaldereski. Maybe she'll talk to me," Nick stated absently, his eyes getting an odd, faraway look to them. Schanke almost wanted to leap for joy. Whenever Nick went into one of his space-out sessions, usually good things came of it...

Jacob, however, only chuckled. "You think you can actually get more out of Goth-babe than Schanke and I could? That'll be fun to see..." he stated sarcastically, the obvious tension between the two finally bleeding out through his biting words.

Nick looked at him harshly. "I'm a good interrogator," he stated simply, but the coldness in his voice was enough to wipe the smile from Jacob's face.

Schanke wanted to scream. Jacob was a good guy, a friendly guy, but his machismo need to best Nick was painfully obvious. He had obviously heard too many rumors about the unflappable Detective Knight and was utterly determined to prove them incorrect.

Jacob's posturing was still evident, and the fact was not lost on Nick. While the smile had been wiped clear off his face, Jacob's stance was anything but submissive, and his fists were visibly clenching and unclenching. Nick merely stared at him, unblinking. "What?" he asked calmly.

"Nothing," Jacob replied, obviously disappointed that Nick wasn't taking the bait.

"Guys!" Schanke finally blurted out, "Cool it! All right? We don't need--"

His words were cut off by the shrill, whining ring of his phone. Schanke stared daggers at Jacob. At least Nick was keeping his cool. He reached down slowly picked up the phone. "Detective Schanke, Metro Homicide," he stated gruffly, not tearing his eyes away from Jacob, who at least had the decency to back off once he had been scolded. "Can I help you?"

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Hello?" Schanke asked, slightly annoyed. This was not a good time for pranksters. Although, he couldn't really think of a good time for pranksters either...

"Did you like the photos? The lighting was bad, I know..."

Schanke's blood ran cold at the grating whisper--the voice of their fake mail carrier. "What do you want?" he asked harshly. Nick and Jacob both looked up at him questioningly.

"Let's just say I've graduated up from maiming, to killing. I like you. You're a good target. Come get me?" Nigel asked, his voice repulsively saccharine.

Schanke frowned in disgust. "Listen, Mr. Evans," he began. Jacob perked up at the sound of the name, but Nick didn't seem to know what to make of it. "If you think I'm just going to traipse down to your little hideout and let you take potshots at me, you're dumber than I thought," Schanke stated angrily--stupid, arrogant bastard.

The disembodied voice laughed cruelly in response, echoing strangely through the wires as though it were amplified poorly. "Which is precisely why I'll just move on to another city and do damage there if you don't. You wouldn't want that on your shoulders, now would you?"

The hair on the back of the Schanke's neck stood on end, and he swallowed hard. The bastard was playing a guilt trip on him!

"Fine," Schanke snapped harshly as he picked up a pen and sifted through the papers on his desk for something to write on. "Where are you?"

"I'm sitting here with a pretty little thing, some whore I dragged off the street. She's really scared. Aren't you scared?" Schanke could tell the question was not directed at him. Nigel laughed at her unseen response. "She's shaking. I can feel her hot skin trembling under my fingers..." he added, and Schanke barely identified a small whimper in the background.

"I might just have to kill her. You wouldn't want her to die, would you, Detective?" Nigel asked snidely.

Schanke squeezed his eyes shut. This situation was degenerating quickly. It had gone from an idle threat to a hostage situation... "No. No I wouldn't," he stated honestly.

"It's a pity that your job makes you care for such trash."

Schanke growled into the phone. "I would care anyway. Get to the goddamned point, Evans!"

"My point is that if you come with the entire police squad to just storm the building and arrest me, then I'll have to kill her. Come by yourself. Or with whoever your partner is right now. I don't care. But if I see one siren, one helicopter, one news crew, one ANYTHING, I'll blow her fucking head off. Got it?" Nigel asked all too sweetly.

"Yeah. I've got it," Schanke stated, restraining himself from saying anything incendiary. The last thing he needed right now was a shouting match, or even worse, a dead woman...

"Good. Come to Dufflaw and Samor, you'll know where to go when you see it. Be there in thirty minutes or she's wall paste." The line was cut as he abruptly hung up.

Schanke sighed and wrote down the address as the dial tone kicked in, and the phone slipped from his shoulder to the desk with a loud thud. "So, what's the what?" Jacob asked nonchalantly before Nick could get a word in.

"We have a major problem," Schanke said. "Grab your keys. We've got to go..."

Jacob looked at Nick, who wordlessly complied, and then back at Schanke worriedly. "Don, shouldn't we tell Cohen?"

"We're doing that on the way out. Come on," he stated as Nick grabbed his coat from the rack and threw it over his shoulders. He glanced at his watch. Twenty-seven minutes.

They were running out of time...


	15. Chapter 15

Nick took a deep breath and stared at the dark, crumbling warehouse, unable to stop the dreadful pounding in his chest, and angry at the very same time that it was pounding at all. This was a routine apprehension of a fugitive, not something that should be generating this level of anxiety. And yet still, the feeling was there.

The only streetlight still functioning was flickering on and off as if a child in a fit were flipping the switch on and off, until after a few prolonged and agonizingly labored changes from dark to light and back, it went out entirely. The sudden failure bathed them in such blackness that he felt like someone had wrapped an opaque black cloth over his eyes. He gasped, startled at how limited human sight was in such conditions.

"Nick? Nick, are you all right? I swear, I can take care of this if you want..." Schanke said from beside him as he pulled out his pistol.

Nick swallowed as he tried to adjust to the chilling air and pitch-black night. Routine. Lots of people had shot him before... This wasn't any different. "I'm fine, Schank," Nick snapped, trying to ignore Jacob's disbelieving snicker as he pulled out his own trusty Beretta 9mm.

Schanke rolled his eyes in response. "Fine, then. I trust you'll take the back, as usual?" he asked sarcastically.

Nick simply nodded and Schanke responded by stalking off, but the sight of his partner's back disappearing into the darkness made him cringe. He had not meant to be so mean. But there was no time for that now...

Jacob stood there with an arrogant smile. "I guess I'm going with you," he stated.

Nick resisted the urge to clock him. Stupid young rookies always tried to posture him when they heard of his loner-hero status in the precinct, and it was something he felt that he could do without. "Look, Michaels, I don't need this right now. Lay off," he warned, and luckily, Jacob was wise enough to nod and keep silent.

Nick squared his shoulders and stared into the darkness, searching it for any form of movement as he slowly slipped behind to the rear door like a cat denied its grace. His progress was slow as he felt his way around the rubble and debris, and he found himself stumbling on quite a few obstructions. On a particularly sharp piece of broken bottle, he cursed as tears came to his eyes, his cloudy breath coming in a few short, pained gasps. Jacob yelped behind him as he kicked up some glass shards. At least the rookie was having the same difficulties, a small comfort.

Schanke was probably already cuffing Nigel and on his way out, this was taking so damn long. Nick sighed and finally fumbled his way to the door, squinting through the darkness in an effort to find the handle. Luckily, the door swung open freely on its hinges, and Nick stepped into the relative warmth gratefully.

"Come and get me..."

The whisper licked up the back of his neck like a wisp of smoke, and Jacob gasped behind him. Startled, Nick darted his glance about, thankful that at least instead of complete darkness, there were now dim shadows. Papers, trash, and other obstructions in the path of the hallway were barely identifiable, but at least partially visible.

About twenty or thirty feet ahead of him in the hallway, he could have sworn he saw a blur move across the grimy carpeting. He squinted, desperately trying to see what he knew that he simply could not. Walking down the hallway, he sniffed the air like the predator he used to be and was only granted with a musty smell of slowly rotting wood and the tangy scent of Jacob's rather strong aftershave.

He reached a small flight of stairs with a flickering fluorescent light buzzing softly above, giving the shadows such an eerie cast that the sight made him shiver.

"Come on..." the voice whispered.

A blur went past the top of the stairs and disappeared into the cavernous hallway beyond. "Did you see that?" Jacob whispered from behind him nervously, his voice quivering.

Nick nodded curtly and motioned for him to be quiet. He closed his eyes and tried to get a sense of his opponent, and was immediately frustrated when the only heartbeat he was able to identify was his own, thumping madly in his chest. He stepped slowly up the stairs, training his gun on the shadows, silently daring them to move.

Hearing the small taps of his and Jacob's feet hitting the stairs echoing strangely like thunder in the empty hallway, Nick felt his own heart rate step up a beat, and his anxiety flared. This was the real deal. One lucky shot and he was dead for real this time.

He would have contemplated it further, but fate, the cruel creature that she was, seemed to have other plans. A blood-curdling scream sliced through the air and speared him viciously, impaling his trembling flesh. Without a thought, he bounced on his feet, intending to take off towards the source at vampiric speed, Jacob be damned. Luckily, he caught himself before his utter lack of acceleration sent him careening to the painfully hard floor.

With a silent curse, he regrouped and took the steps two and three at a time, as many as he could without ripping his lower body in half. Jacob followed him, all protest gone from the former upstart. With a brief glance back, Nick could see that the rookie's face had gone white as a sheet.

Through the dark halls they ran, checking each of the rooms quickly before moving on to the next, guns carefully extended to deliver a silencing blow, should one have been necessary. Small beads of sweat formed and dripped hastily down Nick's pale forehead, a few temporarily blinding him with a salty sting, but he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and continued onward. The woman had screamed. She was in trouble. He had to get there. There was no time to stop because of a sweaty brow, no time to stop because of the pulling twinges of pain in his abdomen, no time to stop and wonder where Schanke was, or if Jacob was still fumbling along behind him like the rookie that he was.

Two floors up, by the third flight of stairs, the muscles in his quads and calves were burning so badly that they seemed to be singing a silent symphony of pain, throbbing right along with the almost healed hole in his gut. For a moment, the wave of agony was so intense, that he thought he was going to die screaming right there. Giving himself a nanosecond of rest, he peered back and saw that Jacob was struggling behind him a few yards back, the look on his face one of terror and determination. Nick doubted the man had ever been under fire before, let alone in a hostage situation.

He forced himself up the last flight of steps to the fourth floor. There were no more left. They had to be there somewhere. He prayed silently that Schanke had already made it and was diffusing the situation.

The second door on the left made him stop in his tracks. The greasy man he had seen in the mug shot earlier, Nigel Evans, was standing there, the muscles in his neck bulging with strain. His trembling left arm was latched around a small blond woman who was, luckily for her, unconscious. "Nick, stay where you are!" Schanke warned from inside the room.

Nick's eyes followed Nigel's outstretched right arm, and then along the invisible path his gun made straight to Schanke's forehead. He could hear Jacob panting softly behind him, and he stood there in silence, his Beretta extended out in front of him to Nigel. Schanke took a deep breath. Nick could see the sweat pouring down his face.

"Well, Detective. It took your lackeys four floors to find me. Fat lot of help they are, eh? At least you've been chasing me since two... I like a good rush," Evans taunted, not moving an inch. The click of his pistol as he cocked it with his thumb echoed through the room, only the sounds of Schanke's, Nick's, and Jacob's panting accompanying it.

Nick met Evans's eyes, locked gazes with him. The world around them seemed to snap into the distance, like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. He felt his muscles tense as he stared intently. "Evans, put your gun down," he whispered soothingly, his voice soft, cold, and monotone.

Evans stared, his eyes narrowing slightly. Nick stared back.

"Put it down, Evans. That's the only way out of this," Nick stated again, looking down the muzzle of his Beretta straight into the man's eerily black eyes, eyes that were like cold puddles of congealed tar.

The gun in Evans's hands moved a fraction of a millimeter before a wide, sadistic grin spread across the man's face, and he laughed. Nick would have been happy if he had lived through his near millennium without ever hearing that sound, that cold, uncaring, soulless cackle of superiority.

"What the Hell do you think you are, a goddamned hypnotist?" Nigel giggled.

And then, their little two-person world shattered with the ear-cracking roar of a pistol firing.

Slow-motion.

Schanke blinked, shying to the side.

Nick shook his head, recovering from the lost connection. The woman in Nigel's hands slipped to the ground with a dull thud, and Nick dashed into the room, launching himself at Evans. In mid-air, he managed to fire his gun before it was knocked away from him.

Another thunderous crack, followed in short succession by another. So confusing... who was shooting?

Flesh to flesh, Nick's fist impacted with Nigel's sweat-slicked cheek as he grabbed his shoulder with the other hand and pulled him down to the floor.

A stab of pain.

Nick winced. "What?" the voice of Evans echoed through his ears. He felt as though he were in a cave. "Not fully healed yet?"

Another stab of vicious pain.

He could hear a thud. The sound of someone pummeling him. Strange to realize all you were hearing was the sound of your own flesh being beaten... And then just when Nick thought that he was surely going to lose, the beating stopped. He grabbed his gun up from the floor and managed to backhand Evans across the face, but Evans had stopped moving, his eyes turning glassy and lifeless.

Nick finally saw the blood burbling out of a small hole in his opponent's chest. Apparently, his mid-air shot had hit Evans after all.

He shoved the body off of him and let out a groan. Jacob was on the ground, still and cold, lying not far from the dead hooker. Schanke was stumbling awkwardly to his feet. "Nick?" he asked, his voice wavering slightly.

Nick stood up silently, ignoring the sirens in the background. Of course. Cohen had said she would give them a twenty minute head start and then she would send backup. Twenty minutes. That was all this had been...

"Nick, are you all right? Are you hit?" he heard Schanke asking him, but it was all running together in his mind as one big long monosyllabic howl.

His Beretta slipped loosely from his fingers and bounced on the floor. He blinked, his eyes falling back on Jacob.

Burning.

His eyes were burning. The world blurred into one big dark impressionistic blot of black paint.

"NICK!" Schanke was upon him now, his hands rubbing all up and down his front and back, checking for any injuries. Nick silently complied, swaying as Schanke's handling made his weight shift back and forth from foot to foot.

"Nick, come on. Snap out of it..."

"I'm fine," he heard himself say. Was that his voice? It sounded so cold... And he wasn't fine. Far from it. But his words were a necessary lie.

Schanke sighed in relief. "Jeez, I thought you were going to go bonkers on me. Nick? That wasn't your fault--don't think that that mess was your fault..." he commanded softly, his words trying to reassure, but they did nothing of the sort.

Schanke didn't know the half of it.

"I know." Another lie.

And as officers and paramedics and cacophony flooded into the room like a riptide, he let the lies keep falling from his lips. Like a waterfall, they spurted from his mouth, until he doubted he was anything more than a walking half-truth, but lies were the only way to escape their prying, mercilessly meddling, concerned eyes.


	16. Chapter 16

"Nick?" she called softly as she slid the door open, almost as though she expected anything louder would shatter him. Although, from what she had heard, anything but utmost caution probably would shatter him.

Jacob was in intensive care, paralyzed from the waist down. The woman had been dead before she'd hit the ground. Evans was Swiss cheese. The bullet Nick had gotten him with in the chest had ultimately done him in, but both Schanke and Jacob had also hit him, one in the thigh, and the other in the side, close to where Nick had been hit. Ironic justice, almost. But no one deserved to die.

She peered into the darkness, squinting in an attempt to find him. Two small ivory-white candles were melting into oblivion on the mantle, and another set of three were placed on the piano, but otherwise, the absence of light made Nick's loft look like a giant void of despair.

"What do you want, Nat?" Nick's voice sounded cold, resigned. Like he had given up.

"You, Nick," she stated hesitantly as she finally found a lump on the leather couch, almost completely camouflaged by the darkness. "I want to help you."

"You can't help me, Nat. There's only one person who can do that, and it's not you."

She felt frustrated at his words, wanted to pick him up and shake some sense into him, but she managed to reply softly, "Well, then who?"

He didn't reply.

Carefully, she made her way across the floor, sifting through the blackness and making her way to sit beside him. His eyes were glittering softly in the darkness as the weak candlelight reflected off them. Staring. He was simply staring, although not at anything in particular. Had she not known that he were mortal, she would've thought him a vampire, so still and cold was he.

"Nick, talk to me..." she pleaded, placing her hand on his arm, praying that the small gesture would be enough to pull him out of his funk.

He sighed. "I tried to hypnotize him. I didn't even realize it until it didn't work..." he finally admitted, his voice strangely choked.

"Nick, it's all right," she tried to assure him, "It will take time to get used to being mortal. What happened wasn't your fault. From what I've heard, Evans was a time bomb just waiting to go off. What happened was his problem. HIS fault. Not yours. Never yours."

"Yes, it is, Nat. It is my fault. They died because I can't be a mortal like I'm supposed to be. Some poor boy, not even twenty-five yet, is bedridden for life because I can't be a mortal like I'm supposed to be," he whispered. He turned to her, his eyes glistening, but when he blinked, all the emotion was wiped away and he was a mask again.

"Nick, you just need time," she stressed.

His brow furrowed in the dim light. He almost appeared to be in pain. "No," he said, looking down into his lap like a scolded puppy.

She looked at his resolve. Saw his face. Saw the hidden pain. The slumped shoulders. The bags under his eyes, as if he had wasted a lot of time mulling over something. And suddenly, everything fell into place. "Nick, no. NO!" she cried, gripping his shoulders and shaking him hard. "You can't! You can't, you can't, you can't!" she moaned, a mantra.

He looked at her coldly. "I have to, Nat. This isn't me anymore," he said, gesturing to himself. "I'm not meant to have this gift. I'm damned," he said, as if it were a simple, every-day fact.

Her chest hurt. It felt like the world was collapsing on top of her, with her mind as the focal point, like a black hole being sucked in on itself. "Bastard," she said coldly.

He blinked, but gave no other indication that her insult had in any way affected him.

She felt the anger burning beneath the surface, as though her blood had turned to cinder and ash, a slow ooze of lava, ready to explode. And suddenly, she couldn't contain it any more, did something she never, ever thought she would ever do.

She slapped him. Hard. Across the face. The kind that stings like tiny knives, slashing at the flesh.

"You can't!" she cried. "Just because you're having a hard time doesn't mean you can just give up! You're not a quitter, Nick. I KNOW you're not. What makes you think that you can just back out on a miracle? SOMEONE obviously thought you should be mortal. Why can't you see that?"

He looked at her, shocked, his hand on his cheek where she had hit him. She could see the tears welling up in his eyes, and he looked away quickly, unable to meet her gaze.

"It hurts," he admitted quietly.

Natalie couldn't help but feel guilty. "I... I'm sorry," she said softly, her vision blurring as tears finally came to her eyes.

Nick turned to her. "Not that. I deserved that," he assured her. He placed his hands on his chest. "This hurts. Nat. I can't deal with this," he whispered gratedly, his hands thumping his chest softly.

Her eyes widened in realization. "What, Nick, did you think that mortality was a one-way ticket to happiness?" she asked incredulously. "Did you think your guilt would just go away?" She snapped her fingers, eyebrows raised. "Like that? It's not that simple!"

There. A tear finally fell from his blue eyes--finally escaping his seemingly omnipotent control. "No, it's not that simple, Nat," he admitted. "I'm still guilty. I still need to atone, and I just can't do that like this."

She felt like she had been struck. So that was how he felt.

"Nick, if you want to be happy, if you want redemption, you have to fight for it. Don't just give up like this. Don't think that getting brought back across will solve anything..." she cautioned, shaking her head.

He took a deep breath. Blinked a few times. "Nat, if anything, this whole mess has proven to me that I'm better off a vampire. I've lived all but a blink of my lifetime as one. If I don't need to be mortal to save my soul, perhaps it's best that I'm not one."

"But," she began, but he interrupted her.

"Nat," he grabbed her hands and clasped them in his own. "I'm just not meant to be mortal. Maybe I used to be. But not anymore."

She shook her head. Felt the tears streaming down her face at the calm defeat in his voice. "You can't..." she whispered.

He looked at her, his mind obviously made up. "I have to, Nat. I have to..." his voice trailed off as he looked at her forlornly.

And her heart crushed in her chest. She had lost him. The fact was obvious to her now. Fate, it seemed, felt it necessary to deal them another cruel blow, but a very small part of her, to her horror, was agreeing with his words, even as the rest of her shook with denial.

A sob fell from her lips. "When?" she asked, almost fearful of the answer.

"As soon as I go to the Raven," he admitted softly.

She nodded, looking into his pained eyes. "I..." The words were lost on her lips, refusing to make any coherent sounds. This was good-bye. They couldn't be together with him as a vampire. He had made that all too clear in the past.

She bit her lip, trying to prevent it from quivering.

"Nat, I have to go," he said, gently shrugging off her shaking hands, but she refused to let go. "Nat, please," he added, a small hint of desperation entering his voice.

She stood up with him, staring into his gorgeous blue eyes, ran her hands through his soft blond curls. All was silent for a moment while she stood there pondering what she was about to lose. As though a magnetic force were attracting her to him, she felt drawn to him, felt a momentous urge to take him in her arms for all she was worth and never let go.

The urge became too great. She kissed him. Lightly at first, relishing the warmth that he offered her, and to her surprise, she found him responding to her, his hands clutching her as though she were a lifeline.

Inhaling his comforting scent, she took a deep breath and kissed him harder. Let her hands roam to his belt buckle. "Nat, we shouldn't..." he moaned softly.

"I don't care," she replied, a hint of frustration entering her voice. "Just let it happen."

With a small whimper, somewhere between one of pleasure, and one of pain, Nick collapsed helplessly against her and they fell to back to the couch. She bucked underneath him, accustoming herself to his weight as his hands ran down her torso, slipping under her blouse. Where she felt his cool fingertips brush against her, sweet and soft like a feather, she felt as though tiny explosions were casting off from each point, setting her skin alight with passion. Slow burning fire spread out through her veins and warmed her to the very tips of her fingers.

"Nick, please," she moaned before he captured her mouth with his, writhing on top of her as though he were in agony, but he made not a sound.

Somehow, all of their clothes made it to the floor, and she didn't really care how. All was silent as the world blurred around her and collapsed into primal desperation. His hands were all over her, touching her, holding her... His lips screamed across her flesh, nipping, sucking, teasing.

She almost cried out with pleasure when he entered her. Almost. As if at the last moment she realized that even the smallest noise would break the spell... He was so gentle... She felt as though she were being caressed from the inside out with exquisite silk. Slow, and deliberate. A far different tone from their last union.

And when the silence exploded with his and her coupled releases, she gripped him tightly, clawed at him as though letting go would be forever. And it would be. She knew that this was the last time, that this was good-bye. He moaned softly, sucking desperately at her neck like he had before until, finally, he fell on top of her, ridden with exhaustion.

She felt him quivering on top of her, trembling, and she rubbed his naked back soothingly, clutching his head with her other shaking hand. "Shhh, it's all right," she whispered. He was crying. Even though he wasn't making any noise, she could feel it. She didn't think she had ever seen him cry before, and she lay in astounded silence, letting his emotions run their course.

They stayed interlocked for a long time. The candles had long since melted down to the brass base of their holders, enveloping her and Nick in darkness. His tense muscles slowly relaxing, she felt his trembling slow and eventually stop, but she did not dare let herself fall asleep. If she did that, then the night would end that much faster, something she really wasn't ready for. So she lay there, caressing the back of his head softly.

She stared upwards at the ceiling, listening to his soft, rhythmic breathing--felt his chest filling her embrace only to exhale again. "Why did you have to make it so hard?" he whispered into her neck, and then he fell silent. She doubted he was still awake.

A tear fell down her cheek. "Because I love you," she replied. But she doubted that he had heard her.

was.


	17. Chapter 17

He stared across the empty dance floor and couldn't help but wish Janette were still there. But she had left him alone, left for parts unknown. And now it was just him and LaCroix, left to spar.

"Nicholas," LaCroix said calmly, stepping out of the shadows as if he had simply materialized from the darkness. "Not that I do not enjoy your company, but what brings you here at this hour?"

He wasted no time. If he didn't do this now, then he wouldn't have the strength to do it at all, and he would be miserable for the rest of his life. _Because I love you..._ Closing his eyes against the pain, he tried not to think of her last words to him.

"I want you to bring me back across," Nick stated softly, unable to meet his Sire's eyes. And he waited silently for the ridicule to start. The I-told-you-so's. The painful admission that he had been wrong to want mortality.

But LaCroix said nothing of the sort. "Are you certain?" was all he asked. With barely a swish of air, LaCroix was next to him, staring intently into his eyes.

Nick nodded mutely, afraid that if he opened his mouth, too many old wounds would come to the surface. Too many skeletons. Too much pain that had never really gone away. Too much guilt...

"Perhaps you will listen to me in the future?" LaCroix inquired, his voice rising in question.

The silence was tangible. Nick couldn't bring himself to respond.

LaCroix chuckled softly. "I did not think so," he said. "You do realize that you are willingly coming back under my wing. That you are willingly sacrificing all that you have sought to part with me for?"

Again, a mute nod. He clenched his jaw. _Mortality is not synonymous with redemption. I wish that you would realize that..._ Nick thought back to Jacob, still, and cold, and pale, much like Nick himself had been weeks before. People were dying because of his own foolish wishes. He had wanted an ideal that had never existed. He had wanted mortality in the way that he had idealized mortals to be. Innocent and pure and lovely in God's eyes. But he felt just as ugly inside as he had before. The guilt was still there, grating at his soul, even more so now that his own stupidity had felled such a young individual.

Mortality was... a sweet thing, a wonderful thing that, had it come much earlier, he was sure he would not have had the strength to relinquish, but it wasn't for him. At the rate he was going, he would get himself killed because he would forget to duck at an important moment, or because some disease that he hadn't been exposed to yet would wreak havoc, or whatever weakness his eight-hundred years of being virtually dead had brought him.

And then where would his chance to atone be? He would be at death's gate, but unlike the last two times, without a choice other than to be stranded in the wasteland or be judged, condemned, and burning in Hell. And truth be told, that scared him more than he would have liked to admit. He didn't want to call himself a coward, not hardly, but it still rang desperately in his ears as true.

Was it a weakness that he didn't want to face his crimes just yet? The balances were far from being in his favor, and yet, how many times had Natalie told him that forgiveness was how God worked, and that if he had truly wanted it, absolution was his? How many times had she insisted that he was punishing himself for no particular reason other than he felt comfortable with it, felt at home wallowing?

He was not Natalie. He had been raised on a different set of beliefs. Who was right? He didn't know, didn't think he ever would, but the simple fact was that he didn't think he deserved forgiveness. Even if Natalie were right, he wasn't even ready to forgive himself, let alone ask forgiveness from God. Maybe in the far future, but certainly not now. And he knew for certain that he would truly regret it if he were to let mortality take his life away when he wasn't ready--before he had truly gotten to the point where he could say that he was okay with everything, that he felt he had fulfilled everything he had been set on Earth to do, and that he was comfortable with the life he had lead and its outcome.

A hard goal. Some would say impossible, especially for someone like him.

A goal that would most likely take more than the half a lifetime or so that he had left, if he were lucky enough to have even that long--not to mention the fact that his body seemed to be informing him, more and more lately, that he wasn't supposed to be a mortal. At least not now.

Was that so wrong? Too much to ask?

Did that make him a coward?

"You were right, LaCroix. You were right. Please don't punish me any further..." he pleaded softly.

LaCroix sighed. "Ah, Nicholas. I was not intending to punish you, not this time, at least," he stated softly, and Nick could feel something hiding in his words. Pain, perhaps? And then Nick felt his Master's hands on his shoulders, turning him around, tilting his head to grant access to his jugular, kneading the soft skin above his pulsing vein...

A brief snarl emanated from his Sire's lips before he felt the pain of his fangs digging into the junction between his neck and his shoulder. Nick cried out, or at least, he thought he did. His legs threatened to give out beneath him like deadweights, but LaCroix's firm grip refused to let him fall.

Falling... He was stationary and yet he felt as though he were falling into an endless abyss. Weightless... His fingers reflexively curled inwards, his nails viciously cutting his palms to shreds as his body went rigid. Blinking, his vision began to blur into one big mess of color, and salty tears streamed down his face. He bucked in LaCroix's grip as he felt his life draining out of him, being sucked out forcefully from two tiny pinprick wounds.

It HURT.

More than it had the first time. More than he had ever expected it would.

His arms spasmed reflexively, his jaw clamped down, but LaCroix's grip was too strong. He felt as though his shoulders were caught in a vice, and when the images began to buffet him, the soundless cry of agony that fell from his lips rumbled through his head like thunder.

The world screamed around him as the blood of thousands dyed his vision crimson. There was crying, and pain, and destruction, and terrible things. But amidst it all, were two points of light, sitting there like they owned all they surveyed. Brown and gold flowed together in a braid of woven color.

Nick reached out and grabbed one of their hands, felt flesh contact flesh, warmth meeting frigid death, and then everything disappeared in a blinding flash of light.

Silence. Except for the wind, there was silence.

The hostile brilliance of the sun beat down on his brow like a physical blow, and he immediately brought his hand up to shield himself.

"Nicholas. Welcome back," a calm voice echoed through the sandy valley of death.

Nick whipped around and saw the small rectangle of light. Before it, a cloaked being stood gracefully, as if its feet weren't even touching the ground--floating. "LaCroix?" he asked hoarsely. Where had his voice gone?

The being shook its head. "Do you wish to be judged?" it asked. "Is this your final visit to this realm?"

"No, I... I need to go back..." Nick stated forlornly.

The figure did not move. The glowing door did not retreat into nothingness. "You are troubled," it said. "Do not be so..."

Nick resisted the urge to laugh. "If you saw the mess my life is currently, you wouldn't say that..." he replied cynically as he sat down on a dusty rock, waiting for LaCroix to call him back.

"You know what you want, now. That is better than where you were before. That was all we ever sought to do," it said simply, robes flowing gracefully as it bowed.

Nick nodded hesitantly. "I guess there is that..." he said absently, before looking up at the figure, and then it occurred to him that the guide had said something else. He felt his stomach sink in his torso. "You. Did you change me back?" he asked.

The guide was silent for a moment. "No. I am only a guide. I have not the power to do something so monumental..." it replied, but Nick could almost feel the warm smile glowing underneath its hood.

"But..." he began.

"Nicholas... Come back to me..." LaCroix's voice rumbled through the valley, pleading his return, interrupting Nick's slowly forming question.

Nick turned to the guide, pleading for an answer to his unspoken question. "You must choose," it stated softly.

He inhaled deeply, knowing that he was to be left guessing. "I choose to return."

As soon as he said the words, the desert faded to black.

THE END


End file.
